


I Talk of Dreams

by nolaespoir



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Academia, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Except Not Really an AU, M/M, Oxford, Prequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2018-07-18 22:50:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 76,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7333879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nolaespoir/pseuds/nolaespoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur is a Rhodes Scholar. Eames is a member of the Bullingdon Club. Shenanigans and heartbreak of an Oxfordian nature ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Innumerable thanks to my most darling beta kedgeree who has patiently watched me putz around with this thing for months and months and months and groan ceaselessly that basically I can't write. The fact that she puts up with me astounds. x
> 
> Also a note for anyone who is wary of WIPs... this fic is essentially complete, with just some cleaning up left to do, so I should be posting consistently each week. Enjoy!

It was September and Arthur’s hair had grown long through the summer; he could run his fingers through it now, just nearly, without feeling the shape of his skull. It had been so many years since he’d last been a boy with lanky dark hair falling down over his eyes, his ears. It hit his shoulders once upon a time, used to get knotted and caught in vineyard leaves. Never again, of course. But maybe he’d let himself have an inch or two here, in this place, so far away from that before.

Autumn, precious for its fleeting, ash-like beauty. Old loose ends tied into a new bow. The trees weren’t yet done for but you knew they would be, one morning, without warning, trading their green for the tarnished gold of early sunsets. Arthur knew, and he liked it that way. He liked the ritual of a cool dawn and a hot breakfast, of watching the morning come in through the kitchen window: summer is gone, and here you are. 

He was tired. This Arthur also knew. _Goodbye_ tired and _start again_ tired and _just survived a seven hour plane ride_ tired. 

Just survived a seven hour plane ride stuck in a middle seat tired, to be exact. He was mostly that. Just survived a seven hour plane ride stuck in a middle seat between a cloying Astrophysics major who smelled too strongly of sweet, drug store perfume and cuddled against him in her sleep and a vaguely nervous Medical Anthropology major who half-watched sitcom reruns with cheap headphones and the volume turned up too loud, the entire flight, while he organized his binder full of color-coded orientation material. 

They were stuck in Border Control now, all 30-some of them, the bright young things of their generation, future world leaders and mild geniuses and perpetual, one-day-you-really-will-burn-out overachievers, and Arthur was thinking of foliage. Boston had ruined him for foliage, probably. 

Arthur had known many kinds of tired in his life, knew how to wear exhaustion like an undershirt, tucked away and chafing.  Never let it show. Late nights, early mornings. Run run run, harder, and harder still and crawl, boy, drag yourself through the rain and the mud and the ache. He knew late nights, no nights, coffee and florescent lighting wakefulness. 

This barely registered, frankly, in comparison. But he’d been living on precipices for an age now, every moment feeling like the last of something and the start of something, and his bones were restless. Restless for all the lasts to be done with. He peeked down at his passport, where he had a finger holding the place of his student visa, and smiled, small and private. He was nearly there. All firsts, all beginnings from here on out.

He hitched his backpack up and stepped forward, passport out.

The agent, plump and sweet and bored, paged through his passport and Arthur didn’t fidget. Pride or relief kept him upright.

“And where are you studying?” she asked. 

“Oxford.” She looked up at that. Her eyes walked over him, head to toe, brightening as she put together a picture of him for herself. She wasn’t so old. Maybe she’d dreamt of Oxford herself once upon a time. Maybe she dreamed of Oxford for her own son, her daughter.

“And what are you studying?”

“Neuroscience.”

She almost laughed, shook her head and brought the stamp down heavily over his visa, coloring across the pale, dead-eyed photo staring up from the corner. She didn’t seem to mind that it barely looked like him. Arthur had dragged himself to a Walgreens in the middle of finals to get the shot, thrown a clean button-up over the t-shirt he’d had on for a week that bore every coffee and Cheeto stain associated with the successful completion of a double thesis in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Chemical Engineering **,** had stumbled back out with four glossy 2x2” and a Red Bull.

Arthur thought he looked much better now, but the agent didn’t comment.

“Good luck,” she said. Arthur grabbed back his passport and flashed his teeth at her, white and straight and a rare sight. But she couldn’t know that. 

Arthur moved on, buoyed, following the shuffling of tired feet to the luggage carousel, where one familiar Astrophysics major was being dragged in circles by her enormous suitcase. _Joyce_ , his mind supplied. They were almost intimately acquainted at this point, after all. She had both hands latched onto the bag’s handle and was tugging, but it insisted on tugging back. Her steps were quick and stressed as she followed it around. No one gave her much mind. Arthur thought she might be the bright future of Astrophysics but earthly physics were not her strong suit. 

“Need a hand? Maybe two or three?” he offered. 

“Oh god, please. Thank you.” She relinquished her hold so Arthur might find purchase. With a heave and a flex, he brought the bag to the ground. His upper arms burned for a quick minute with the weight of a personal library.

“I hear Oxford has books, too, you know,” he said. She didn’t correct him and didn’t ask how he guessed. Birds of a feather, this lot. 

“Where I go, they go,” she said. 

Others were filtering through, tucking away their passports, congregating with slight trepidation. Arthur helped three others with their bags before his own came around for him to claim and move away. 

Two suitcases, medium-sized, black. His backpack. It was all he had in the world.  

They met mirrors of themselves on the other side, one year older, carefully trying not to show the wear that one year wrought. They were still young, with watery eyes and wide smiles and blazers, sensible shoes, name tags, signs. _Welcome Rhodes Scholars!_

The group was herded through Heathrow, all blue and bright yellow signs, accents in the air. It wasn’t unlike herding a group of mildly awkward, headstrong cats, probably, to lead a group of individuals all used to doing the leading. Outside they found a bus—a _coach_ , the other Scholars insisted on calling it. It wasn’t _wrong_ ; it was a Britishism, and Arthur knew he’d come to know them all. _Coach_. It sounded like something out of Jane Austen or Dickens. To be traveling by coach through the countryside.  Not that Arthur had read much of either. Somehow he’d never found the time. 

While their bags were loaded, before they could load themselves, they were all matched up, one senior Scholar to every two or three of them, and sorted. Someone had a map of all the colleges, was calling them out and seating people accordingly. Logic abided, ease and sense. Last on, first off. 

His senior was baby-faced and anciently dressed, all shallow blue eyes and dishwater blond hair and tweed. On anyone else it might’ve felt too purposeful, staged and desperate, but he seemed unaware of the pretension he was due, had a sweet giggle and restless limbs. 

Dom, he’d introduced himself as. Dominic Cobb, Political Theory, Magdalen College by way of Princeton, by way of Pasadena, California.

A lifeline, Arthur thought, accepting his hand and introduction before following him onto the bus. The _coach_.

The interior was comfortable, almost plush, generously outfitted and slightly claustrophobic. So many bodies, so much brain, all stuffed into one metal contraption on wheels, plowing ahead through the damp green morning. They were offered granola bars and bottled water, which Arthur hoarded. 

“Arthur Darling, Neuroscience, Magdalen College by way of MIT, by way of Occidental, California,” Arthur said, humoring Dom’s resume. 

California felt far and away; he didn’t talk about it much, or the boy he’d been once upon a time, but something about Dom had drawn it out of him—there was a delicacy in his curious eyes that lacked cruelty or self-interest. Arthur had known him all of five minutes.

Dom didn’t press, just gave Arthur a close-lipped, fraternal smile and clasped him by his shoulder.

"Neuroscience, huh? The brain. Tricky business, that."

"So I’ve found," said Arthur. 

Dom looked far away for a moment, like a dreamer in storybooks, steady, far away eyes clouded over with other lives. Except he was here and dreamers didn't end up here, as Rhodes Scholars. It took too much damn work. In Arthur’s world the dreamers were trampled by the doers, the ones who could be bothered to put their thinking in grant proposals, personal statements. They traded their youth for wisdom; they forced it into themselves, into their veins too soon, like addicts, and won praise for it. But Dom… There was a youthfulness to him that scared Arthur, even in those first moments, or stirred in him a sharp sadness, because he could see that the world surely would never let Dom hold onto it for long, and he'd have that much further to fall when reality crashed down on him. 

“Well, Arthur Darling—”

“Just ‘Arthur’. Please.”

“Well, Just Arthur: Welcome to Oxford.”

The noise of Heathrow faded. Arthur watched out the window as they passed through the brown and grey of slumped and squashed suburbs, hamlets, as they escaped into to the storied pastures, damp and undulating, of the English countryside. 

Dom wasn't one for too many pleasantries. He didn’t make comments about the weather. He didn't ask Arthur his "story," or say things like, "I had a friend at MIT! Do you know so-and-so?" Arthur didn't have much of a stomach for the smallness of the world, for people who always wanted to tie you back to your history, for the fraternity of networking. Unlike many of the other more senior Scholars, who were forcing their charges into bouts of awkward conversation, Dom was mostly quiet, watchful. His fingers danced at his knees, pulling on the loose-fitting fabric of his tan slacks. 

“I suppose you’re pretty good with it? The brain, I mean,” Dom eventually said.

“I’m learning.”

“There’s a fellow at Magdalen, Doctor—” 

“I know,” Arthur said, because he did. His breath caught for a second. He very much knew about Doctor Charles. “Why do you?”

“He’s written some pretty interesting things about influence, suggestibility. He has this little pet theory, about dreaming—about how vulnerable it makes us, how susceptible to external stimuli we are in that state. He wrote a whole paper—”

“—That no one read, that no one took seriously,” Arthur nearly snapped. He was sitting up straight in his seat now. Dom’s gaze was lazy, and it drifted away from Arthur as if the exchange meant nothing much.

“You did, I think,” said Dom. 

Dom was studying Political Theory and talking about how impressionable the sleeping, defenseless mind might be, and Arthur realized in that moment that maybe he should be a little scared of Dom, and very interested in him. Dom, the dreamer who knew how to work. Arthur shifted away.

“If we shadows have offended...” Dom said at last. 

“The thing is, Dom: Are you really an honest Puck?” asked Arthur. Dom grinned at him, goofy and harmless. 

The world got quieter the closer they moved into Oxfordshire. Arthur leaned his forehead against the window and watched their slow crawl along the streets, everywhere flocked by weathered stone facades and wrought-iron gates and patches of bright lawns. He thought himself close to weeping at the picture, which was probably the jetlag.

Eventually the coach stopped. A Pembroke College girl disembarked, and a pair to Corpus Christi College, a Brasenose College young man, then a handful to All Souls College, University College, Merton College… they began to blur for Arthur, who sucked in the worn, chiseled, manicured cloisters, quads, of every passing one. 

“We’ll be next,” Dom said, bringing Arthur to attention. He settled his grip on his backpack. “You know your accommodations?”

“Holywell Ford House.” Arthur hadn’t been given much information past that, but he wasn’t particularly fussy. A bed, a desk, a window if he was lucky, and he’d make do (he’d done with less; he expected to live in labs and libraries, anyway). A map had suggested the house wasn’t a far walk from the college, just on the other side of the deer park, and this was apparently a lucky thing. December in Oxford, then January, February, drafty stone buildings and wide fields of permafrost. 

“At least it isn’t the Stables,” said Dom. “I’m not sure their kitchen even actually _works_.”

The coach stopped for them and Dom led the way, helping to free Arthur’s two suitcases from the baggage hold underneath. Arthur started to protest, could obviously manage on his own, but something about how eager Dom was to do this, without condescension, without ego, stopped Arthur, and he let him. 

“I live over there,” Dom said, pointing across the street to a squat, regal-looking building tucked back behind some hedges, hiding in trees.

“Professor’s House. Damn lucky, that draw. Riled up some DPhils, I guess, but thems the breaks.” 

He turned back around and stretched out his arms in presentation. 

“And this, my new friend, is our esteemed Magdalen College.” 

The sheer golden stone of the college butted up against the pavement, shadowing them both. It was like much of buildings Arthur had admired on their way in, which is to say it was majestic, soaked in aged promise. Oxford was a “city of dreaming spires,” he’d heard it called, which felt apt but also not enough, now that he was standing here, close enough to touch.  Magdalen Tower reigned above them, silent for now but not for always. Arthur had seen grand old colleges, all the Ivies—Harvard, which was its own beast, Yale and Princeton, which felt like mere imitations now. There was something startling, that made Arthur feel quite like a child, about standing before something that was older than his whole country. He was here, really; he could touch this place, a place of history and stories of legends. He could make a mark, however small, in this grand place that would outlive him.

There were bikes chained up to a drainage pipe. Arthur was in love with the picture, still. 

“Are you tired? Hungry? Of course you’re tired but I mean, are you going to crash just now? We can find you some coffee or tea—you don’t look like the sort who drinks much tea. I know it kind of just tastes like dirty water when you start, but you get used to it,” Dom prattled on, taking the handle of one of Arthur’s suitcases. Arthur began to drag the other, following.

“I can give you a proper tour and everything later, but probably we should just get you settled in for now.”

The walk to Arthur’s accommodations took them around the side of the college, through the boathouse and down a tree-lined path called Addison’s Walk, which followed the River Cherwell away from the college, away from the city, past The Grove—a wide expanse of green that Arthur just peaked through the early foliage—to Holywell Ford. 

It was like coming upon a storybook hamlet, the small ivy-covered stone houses tucked together around the river, draped in weeping willows and oak. Some of the ivy was changing, coloring a wall here and there a shocking red. They rounded a hearty vegetable garden in the middlebeing tended by a small girl in a Van Halen t-shirt. She didn’t look up.

Dom looked at the printout Arthur had produced and scanned the houses, picked one. Inside was slightly less storybook, save its quaintness. The walls were narrow, dim, not exactly cared for. It smelled of dust and damp, and though it was only just the end of September, there was a distinct coolness to the place. Rain boots by the front door, encrusted with mud. Envelopes stuck in cubbies, overflowing, making a mess on the floor. 

Dom brought Arthur to his room and bid him temporary adieu, promised to take him out for a meal later, if Arthur wanted to unpack and maybe take a nap in the meantime. It wasn’t yet late afternoon but Arthur couldn’t tell his body that, felt it winding down already, and he accepted Dom’s proposal, shut the door on him and collapsed down on the low, narrow bed pushed into the corner. 

The room was fine, in an uncared for way. Odd blue carpet clashed with the maroon curtains, which matched the thin, rough duvet he'd fallen down on. A desk and chair were pushed up against the small window, cheap wooden shelves had been tacked up above a white sealed fireplace. Mostly what Arthur thought about the place was: it was bare.

The next few days would see him covering the University back and forth for Welcome Day events, day trips, college tours and meals with alumni, drinks and mingling, making a dozen first impressions in his pressed, hand-me-down suit. But for now, it was just him, lying alone in a room a world away from anyone who knew him, too tired to sleep. His cell phone was somewhere in his backpack, along with the international calling card they'd all been gifted at the end of their Bon Voyage Weekend, but he had no one to call, no one that would care that he'd made it here safe and sound. 

He was all alone, save a few souls he'd known for a weekend, for a plane ride, and Dom, who only had an obligation to be decent to him. It wasn't unfamiliar, the feeling of being so unmoored, but it was an acquired taste and he'd forgotten it. He'd get used to it again. 

Arthur rolled off the bed, _his_ bed, and went for his suitcases, opened them both in turn and stared at his neatly packed away life. Some clothes, the undergraduate notebooks he wouldn't part with. He found his one framed photo, folded up in a sweater, and allowed himself to look at it for a good minute before he put it on his mantel. A family smiling. A polished pocket watch and a stained wine cork eventually joined it, and a small vial of unlabeled perfume. 

The trinkets would seem like something special for a while, but the room would eventually fill up with library books and composition notebooks, pencils and half-drank mugs of tea, drying out umbrellas and plates of Digestive crumbs, and then they wouldn't seem like much at all. 

At last, Arthur could sleep. 

Arthur settled into life at Oxford like he had settled into most things in life: proudly and with fierce determination.

Within the week he’d met with his Course Director, memorized his timetable, traversed half the stacks in three-fourths of the University’s libraries, noted four prime (see: secluded) study spots, found the most comfortable chair in the MCR with the best lighting for reading the morning newspaper over a cup of burnt-tasting instant coffee, joined the Sherrington Society, joined the Cortex Club, joined the Psychology and Neuroscience Application Society, even joined a damn wine society, for god’s sake. He’d done tours of the Ashmolean with the Rhodes House, gone to debates at the Oxford Union, dressed for formal dinners in three different college dining halls.

He met sweet girls and sweet boys, sharp, bright things, all of them “full of promise.” Some pretty, some rather stunning, many tragically not so, and Arthur returned home each night alone to his little room in the woods, and he told himself it was fine because mostly it was. He had reading he should do. 

Term started. Arthur slept in wool socks and discovered the wonders of a hot water bottle, found an extra blanket for his bed and really wished his fireplace wasn’t decorative. He started drinking tea, mugs and mugs of it, and threw himself into his coursework. Hours slipped away, eight, ten at a time sometimes, before Arthur looked up from his books. Every time the day seemed shorter. He had lectures, seminars, was already preparing a proposal for his next term research project. He walked a tight line, from his department centre to the Rhodes House for tea and snacks, familiar faces, a rest, onto the Radcliffe Science Library, and back. He often didn't see his own room until the middle of the night.

Dom had fulfilled his obligation of hospitality and then surpassed it, introducing Arthur around to “the right people,” who were really _his_ right people, and who mostly seemed to sit in dim corners of pubs drinking cheap on-tap beer, discussing philosophy, theory, semantics. Pinched and thoughtful faces from every longitude and latitude: a chemistry student from Mumbai, a theologian from Prague, a linguist from Copenhagen, a law student from Rio, a computer scientist from Dusseldorf. More and others, in constant rotation, but somehow all familiar. They were fellow Rhodes Scholars, Fulbright Scholars, Marshall Scholars. One or two precocious (and that was saying something) undergrads, far from home. 

The star pupil of Dom’s gatherings was Mallorie Larue, a curve-less beauty who drew eyes whenever she slinked bare-faced through a room, her hair unkempt and smelling of lavender, her body at ease with movement, her eyes bright with love—in any and all its forms. In a word, she was French. In a word, she was lovely. She was a Fine Art student and the undisputed protege of her father, a once-famous architect now retired, who taught at the university down the road and drove up every Tuesday to take her for dinner. It’d taken Dom nearly six months to weasel himself an invite to join the pair; Arthur inexplicably got himself invited after two weeks.

“Dom has an artist’s heart, you know,” she said to Arthur that first Tuesday. They were seated beside each other, Dom and her father, Miles, on the other side. Mal was tearing up a piece of bread on her plate, watching a conversation bloom across the table.

“He has an artist’s heart, he just won’t admit it,” she said. “But you wait. I am certain I will lure him over to our side one of these days.”  She whispered to Arthur conspiratorially, like a promise between friends, and Arthur liked that she thought him worthy of conspiring with. He liked it more that she thought him on her side, thought him an artist, though he spent his days in lectures and laboratories. It was like she saw more of him than he could see of himself, saw the tucked away part that thought, in another life, maybe he could’ve been a poet. His grandfather used to give him a dollar for every poem he memorized by heart, when he was young, and he had whiled away hot summer days muttering lines of Whitman to himself, hiding, burned red beneath the overgrown vineyard vines. 

He hadn’t told Mal that, but when she looked at him, it was like she knew. She brought that out in people, Arthur would one day realize: that dreaminess. Mal saw you as you wanted to be seen, thought you could be anything you wanted to be and do absolutely anything you wanted to do, like mothers in storybooks or memories. It was part of her charm (it would be part of her downfall). Arthur wanted to deserve the way she looked at him, like he sometimes felt he needed to deserve the way Dom looked at him.

Arthur was not lazy. His brilliance, which was grand and stunning in and of itself, was no gift. He did not take it for granted, especially in a place like this, where his fingers could trace the scuff marks of geniuses. His mind was his reward, earned by devotion, persistence, grit. He had never not worked hard at something. He could make it look easy, sure, but sometimes he didn’t, not to Dom—Arthur knew there would be nothing more disappointing to Dominic Cobb than if he had wasted his time befriending just another dull, predictable Rhodes Scholar waiting for his diploma and a job offer from McKinsey & Company.

So Arthur studied, and he said clever things when he could, and he tagged along ceaselessly to Dom’s salons, which were often exhausting and only sometimes enlightening. 

After a handful of these small conferences, after Arthur had learned their rotating cast, it become clear Dom didn’t seem to care much for the British themselves (save one tiny brat from Bristol, who could drink them all under the table and still prove the existence of God in symbolic notation). 

Plenty of them had brains, Dom said. Boys from Eton, St. Paul’s, Westminster. Girls from Downe House and Old Paulinas. They could recite Euripides in ancient Greek while they slept, knew Mozart from Chopin from Stravinsky in two obscure bars. But that was their problem—they were too bogged down in history, Dom said. Slurred, really, woozy and passionate on too many Snakebites. They had discipline but they lacked motivation, lacked innovation and invention, what clawing your way up from nothing gave you. 

It was an ironic requirement, Arthur thought—they were all privileged in some way, studying at the oldest university in the world—but Dom didn’t want to be swayed. He wanted supple, elastic minds, people who had built themselves up as they’d gone along, who only looked ahead.

Arthur wondered if Dom knew more about him than he’d ever said, but none of them spoke much about where they came from, and he didn’t want to ask. 

Dom waved, vaguely, at the corner, and sighed with disgust. Or maybe it was just resignation. 

“Oh, Dom. Don’t,” said Lucy, who was just re-joining the table with a fresh round. She was one of their undergraduate recruits, a pint-sized Christchurch blonde from outside Auckland with a frightfully thorough understanding of human anatomy and little tolerance for Dom’s lush theatrics. She took her usual seat, on the other side of Mal. 

“Don’t? Don’t what?” he said, knowing exactly what she meant.

Lucy rolled her eyes and exchanged a look with Mal: this was an old schtick.

Arthur looked toward the corner and saw nothing. More sticky tables covered in more empty glasses, wan faces and animated faces, depending on how the drink was hitting them. The pub was full and loud, a Thursday night at the start of term.

“They’re not worth it,” she said.

“No, they’re not. And that’s the point!” Dom laughed, half angry. He looked down to find solace in his beer. 

“Sorry. Who are we talking about?” Arthur asked.

“Just some kids. Toffs. You know, 'Do you know who my father is' types.” Lucy nodded her head at the corner, same as Dom. 

Arthur knew how money and pedigree wore on people—kids—which was 'awkwardly,' mainly. Shoulders too slight yet for the importance they sought to hoist up on them. MIT had its bunch, like all schools, and he'd made the mistake of attending some overblown Finals Club foray at Harvard when he was a sophomore, full of sheltered, desperate boys in the best tailored bits of Hugo Boss, Brooks Brothers. 

So Arthur could see it now that he knew what to look for: a well-polished bunch, draped carefully over the table nearest the window. Four boys at the heart, blurry-eyed and just on the right side of handsome, a couple standing at their backs, leering obviously at the girls squeezing past on their way to the bar. 

They didn't stand out, per se; it was in the details: the flash of a Tag Heuer watch when one raised a glass in cheers, a fine pair of leather Ferragamo brogues settled into a puddle of spilled beer under the table, a Versace wallet left out on the table amidst the evening's detritus.

There was a carelessness about them that could only be from money. 

They were in conference about something, and all quite focused, save one. 

One boy was staring at them. 

Arthur looked to his side, to Dom, who had already moved off the topic and was now trying to convince Mal quite insistently of the poetics of political infrastructure; he looked behind him, to no one in particular. He risked a glance back at the far table and saw the boy was smirking now, something crooked and amused. Arthur flushed. 

Mal, of course, noticed. 

“Arthur. I really wouldn’t,” she urged. 

“Wouldn’t do what? What’s Arthur doing?” Dom asked, oblivious, into Arthur’s silence. 

Arthur downed the last of his beer. Next round was his.

“You are a nice boy, yes?” Mal carried on, ignoring Dom. “You are a very nice boy and they are... not. He, I think, is especially not.”

“Unless your type is, in a word: whorish,” Lucy added. 

“I heard he has an original Kandinsky hung in his fucking room,” Dom said. Mal smiled wanly, like she might know. 

“Arthur?” Mal was looking at him, her eyes bright with unearned concern. 

Arthur shifted, rubbed the back of his neck, scratched at his smooth jaw. “Yeah right,” he said, dismissing it, wrapping it in a small laugh to suggest just how ridiculous she was being: _Yeah right I’d go for a monied prick like that._ Yeah right he’d go for _me_. 

Because Arthur was great at a good many things, but interpersonal relationships were not one of them, and he would not risk the favor of his fresh friends for an awkward flirt, maybe even an okay fuck. _Yeah right_ , he said, because he knew enough to know that’s what he was supposed to say, confirm the group’s prejudice, be on their side. Arthur had been a lone wolf before but he’d come to like this little company of theirs, brilliant and mismatched and _his_ ; it scared him and he loved it and it wouldn’t let anything threaten it.

It wasn’t a stretch anyway, Arthur rationalized. People with money and family and not enough sense to appreciate either? Of course he’d hate them. Easy. 

The boy was still staring at Arthur, though; rakish, his smile hidden in his beer. It wasn’t a bashful look, not a leer; it settled in between, warm and daring, and maybe Arthur wanted to be flattered by the attention, but it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t let himself be. His friends, the people whom he had picked to trust—or rather, who had picked him—considered this kid bad news, and that would have to be enough for Arthur. 

Dom looked pleased at his incredulity, gave Arthur a pat on the shoulder and a drunken, approving smirk. 

“Fuck ‘em. Fuck the lot of them,” Dom said.

Mal rolled her eyes.

“Just not literally,” he added. 

“It’s for your own good, mon petit chou,” Mal said. 

None of it really mattered, Arthur told himself. It’s not like he even had time for that sort of thing. He'd make sure of it. Stuff like that was… messy. Distracting. Oxford deserved more of him than that—it deserved all of him, every iota of attention and devotion. He had a year, maybe to make sense of what he’d started at MIT—a year, a blip, one that had to count; a gift, a dispensation. Boys—especially pretty boys with pouting mouths and stubbled jaws—hadn’t been factored in. 

Arthur was disappearing into his work, studying in fierce, regimented bouts. He’d met with his professors, tutors, made an impression on passing Fellows with just a moment to spare. He’d revised his research proposal and then revised it again, and along the way he explored a dozen libraries across campus, dusty and underfunded archives, hoarded yellowing periodicals, each with the same byline: Osmund Charles, BSc, MAppSci, PhD, DSc, CPsychol, FRSM, FBPsS, Magdalen College, Oxford. 

This was why Arthur was here.

Dr. Charles was a dinosaur, dotty and forgettable, a circadian neuroscientist with a few screws loose who just happened to be a fellow at Magdalen College. And he had a pet theory, dreamt of a drug that might temporarily fuse the synapses of two slumbering subjects, synthesize their neural pathways, overlaying one on the other...

Arthur had stumbled upon an obscure series of papers he’d published in the late 80s, into the 90s, ill-regarded at the time and largely lost to innovation now, when Arthur himself was still struggling to pin down his senior thesis project, and something bewildering had clicked in his brain when he'd read them. 

The research was found wanting and Dr. Charles’ theory was considered more science-fiction than science; he's shifted his focus in the years since, partially, Arthur imagined, in a bid to salvage his professional reputation; but Arthur had kept tabs on him, couldn't imagine he had abandoned the idea as cleanly and completely as he seemed to have. 

It was true that there were serious holes in Dr. Charles’ theory, painful jigsaw puzzle pieces missing in his research, but Arthur's own research has begun to grow around those holes. He built his entire thesis on one such chasm, grounded the theory, concluded vast and devastating and wonderful implications. He'd won a senior prize for it. He'd won a Rhodes Scholarship at the same time. 

At Oxford he was meant to expand upon the work he'd started at MIT and his next step was to get on as an assistant in Dr. Charles' sleep research lab. And because he was Arthur Darling, he made it look as easy as that. 

Arthur had been given a white lab coat and put behind a desk a week into term. It wasn't the first time he’d worn one, wouldn’t be the last, but nonetheless he felt chafed by it, the artificial authority woven into the well-starched material. Always had.

_That_ was why Arthur was _here_. 

“My round, yeah?” Arthur said, getting up. 

“Cheers!” Dom thrust up his empty pint in emphasis.  

Arthur shook off the exchange, fished a £20 note from his pocket to fold and unfold while he leaned against the bar and waited; it was mindless and it helped, redirected his focus. 

And that would have been that, probably—probably Arthur would've never thought of that face by the window again—if a warm, solid body hadn’t pressed up close beside him just then. 

Of course it would be the guy from the window. Life had a sense of humor.

Arthur didn't look over this time. He didn't need to, to know. He kept his eyes down on the bar and watched a hand settle near his. The nicotine-stained fingers were blunt, a little dumb and stuttering. A grey cord bracelet settled low on the wrist, ceramic and gold rings knotted along one side. It was almost enough to distracted one from the hands’ rough, scarred skin. 

"What are you drinking?" his neighbor asked. The voice was grossly unfair, somehow throaty and lilting. Arthur raised his head, only to look straight ahead. 

“I’m good,” he said, with a nod for decency. 

“Where are you from?” the boy tried again. Arthur didn’t answer. “Let me guess: The colonies.”

Arthur politely ignored him.

“Now I see you wondering, ‘What gave me away?’ And I bet you’d expect me to say something about your accent, or maybe your perfect pearly whites. But that could all be Canadian. No… it’s your face that really gives you away. It's got smug independence written all over it.” The boy gestured to the bar's mirrored backsplash, as if Arthur might be unfamiliar with his own face. He looked anyway, before he could remind himself not to, and met the boy's gaze, slightly distorted by half-empty bottles of cheap liquor. 

“Eames,” he introduced, turning his body at Arthur and extending a hand. _Eames_. Like Arthur wanted to swap surnames with him like two old public school chums. 

“Your parents really passionate about furniture then?” Arthur didn't turn to meet Eames. 

“I actually grew up in a one-room hovel without any couches or chairs, would you believe it. I slept in a nest of blankets on the floor. My parents are really passionate about irony.”

Arthur nearly laughed despite himself, but covered it with a cough, shaking his head, angling his body further away. He focused on the _clank_ of glasses, the _slop_ of spilled drinks, a cacophony of jeers and squeals, swapped stories, shared commiserations. Surely Eames would get the hint. Surely he’d cut his losses and walk away, bored and muttering something about Arthur not being worth the trouble. He’d never been worth the trouble before. 

But Eames stayed put. Arthur risked a sideway glance and saw Eames was _beaming_ at him. 

“It’s alright to laugh, love. I’m hilarious.” 

Arthur couldn’t stop staring, once he’d started, understanding just what it was everyone else saw in this creature, right before they fell into bed with him, right before they were crushed by him. There was a natural ease to him, to how he held himself—his frame practically sagged in rapture, propped up against the bar with his lips pursed, smiling. His hair was roughed up, shagged; his clothes were precious, this season’s, but ill-kept, because what did he care? Life had always—and would always, he probably knew—provided him a veritable smorgasbord of wonders and delights. 

“I suppose it was your sense of humor that kept you warm on all those long, cold nights in the hovel?”

“A poor substitute for a warm body, alas, but when needs must...” Eames flashed Arthur a mouthful of crooked teeth. They seemed so out of sorts with the rest of Eames’ handsome, ridiculous face, Arthur almost flinched. 

The bartender reached them, finally, and Arthur ordered a round of Kronenbourgs.

“Not exactly a problem for you these days, I hear,” Arthur said, cautiously casual. 

Eames glanced back at Lucy and Mal, gave them a wink.

“So you do know who I am.”

Arthur didn’t shrug. He didn’t play _coy_ —he had no interest in playing cat-and-mouse with this dumb, beautiful boy; really he _didn’t_.

“I assure you,” Eames began, “the rumors about me have been greatly exaggerated."

“Misunderstood, are you?”

“Oh yes. Deeply.”

“Serious, studious…”

“Yes, yes.”

“Prudish.”

“Well let’s not get carried away.”

“And you’re biding your time here, fooling everyone.”

“One learns many and varied survival skills when one lives in a hovel.” 

Arthur shook his head, a smile creeping over his lips despite himself. “It’s a bit old, I’ll grant you, but you really shouldn’t say such things about Oxford,” Arthur said. A joke. Oh god, was he really trying to _spar_ with this Eames character? 

But Eames had latched on with a feral, excited leer, and he didn’t intend to let their momentum drop. He said, “Masonry _can_ make for some drafty, frigid nights. Maybe you’re in need of my services?” 

Arthur flushed and said, “You think you have a hot body?”

“Want to check my references?” 

Eames said it with cheek, too much cheek, maybe, and Arthur felt the smoking kindling in him go out, doused by Eames’s flippancy, its implications. Arthur ducked his head to hide the way his facescrewed up. The bartender finished pulling his round and slid the glasses toward Arthur, along the bar. Beer sloshed over the rim and soaked into his cuff, cold and smelling of yeast. 

Eames took a hold of Arthur’s sleeve, dragging the fabric through puddle as he tugged him close. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said as Arthur stumbled a step closer to him. With his free hand, Eames reached into his back pocket to pull out his wallet. 

And suddenly Arthur knew: this was a game, something these sorts of people did for sport: playing others, having them, conquering them. The last vestiges of imperialism.

Arthur shook Eames off and straightened out his cuff. “I’ve got it,” he said, throwing down his own £20. 

“Don’t be proud, love,” Eames said, plucking the bill of the bar. He folded it with great show and a vile smirk on his face and tucked it into Arthur’s front pocket. 

Arthur seized Eames’s wrist and twisted, causing Eames to draw it back with a yelp. He nursed it against his chest for a moment, watching Arthur with something like a wounded look in his wide, puppy eyes.  

Arthur paused, considered Eames, and then laughed. Loudly. Threw back his head and howled, quick and sharp. Eames narrowed his eyes at him. 

“You _people_. Oh god. The arrogance. ” Arthur shook his head, incredulous. “You're right, I do know you: Clever... ish, lazy. Entitled. Spent your whole life at all the very best schools, where teachers told your parents, ‘Eames is a bright boy, if only he’d apply himself.’ But you could never be bothered, and you ended up at fucking Oxford all the same. Because where else would you go, right? You’ll putz around here for three years, edge out a 2:1 somehow, and next stop: Westminster.”

Eames opened his mouth, poised to defend himself, when—

“Arthur!” Dom shouted above the noise, drunk and impatient. He was still holding his empty glass in the air. Arthur turned toward the call. 

“I’m coming!” he shouted back, gathering up their beers. Arthur turned back and looked Eames dead in his grey eyes. He looked young this close up, and mildly stunned, like Arthur had found the seam in his disguise, the part in his veil of overconfidence. There was something brewing there, behind those stormed-over eyes. A surging, tumbling mess of indignation, embarrassment, and maybe… disappointment? Like Arthur had read him exactly how Eames had meant him to; maybe like Arthur had read him exactly how Eames had hoped he wouldn’t. 

Arthur couldn’t think about it, with Dom waving his arms about wildly and Mal watching him, her dark eyes inscrutable and piercing. 

If that’s who Eames was, really was, then fuck him, Arthur thought. Arthur hadn’t had a single thing handed to him in his entire life; he’d worked goddamn hard for the lot of it. He’d never be able to stomach someone who didn’t know the value of that. Someone who used their money like puppet strings, making their pretty things dance for them. 

“Sorry, kid. Better luck next time.” Arthur smirked at Eames’s dumb face, which lit briefly with curiosity and challenge, and turned on his heel. 

He returned to his table, keeping his head low. Eames’s crew has disappeared, but the pub had stayed loud, students packed in too close, too warm. Arthur pushed his beer to the center of the table—up for grabs—and sat back. He didn’t have the stomach for it anymore. 


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting a little early on account of having the time over the long weekend. I expect going forward I'll probably weekly, on Wednesdays.
> 
> Also, I'm not sure libraries at UK universities stay open quite so late as some American ones, but forgive me for twisting things to my benefit.

The cafe was quaint, like a cupboard wedged crookedly in the crack between the stone of two colleges. The bright blue paint of the storefront was chipped, a little dirty, but the windows seemed to glow, throwing panes of gold onto the damp, grey street. Arthur could feel the warmth of the place settle into his bones before he’d even opened the door, like an oasis for the cold and the weary and, maybe, the lost. 

Arthur was a little lost.

He knew Oxford well enough. _Well_ , he knew his bit of Oxford well enough, the dozen or two streets he took to get from here to there, lectures to the library, the college, the Rhodes House, a few pubs. 

Arthur’s Oxford wasn’t terribly sprawling, when he paused to consider the matter. 

If that was unfortunate, it was really only troublesome, though, went he went astray. Which did happen, from time to time. Arthur walked to digest things, like he ran to work through things and sat to produce things, and on occasion he lost track of his feet. On this unremarkable Wednesday afternoon Arthur had been going over his morning tutorial, waiting for the dust to settle on redintegration, when he’d turned a corner and here it was, this little cafe. His stomach had grumbled and his legs went weak. He ached, suddenly and most ardently, for a madeline and a cup of tea to dip it in. 

He’d had plain toast for breakfast hours earlier, with two hard-boiled eggs and black coffee, over a stack of scientific journals: Neurochemistry, Neurophysiology, Neuropsychopharmacology. He’d been awake since four o’clock. He’d chased down the sunrise, running the November misery out of his body. He was starving. 

Inside was cramped and cozy. Faded wallpaper curling in the corners; baseboards flaking coats, years, of paint. The floor uneven, creaking, covered completely with overlapping rugs. There was a handful of worn armchairs pushed into the corners, three tables at the center of the room, and the counter, behind which slouched a permed, ruddy-faced doll of a woman. Loose jowled, tired, a thin-lipped smile. There was flour in her greying blonde hair and she’d gone soft in the best places, like a mother. 

Arthur dropped his bag into a shabby velvet armchair to claim it—unnecessary, there were only three other people in the cafe—and went to the counter. 

“Cream tea, please,” he said. Proust had settled into the folds of his memory now. No need for madeleines. 

“Black or Earl Grey?”

“Earl Grey is fine.” Arthur fished a few coins from his pocket, dropped them into her palm and retreated to his corner to wait. The whole room smelled perfectly of scones ready to be drawn out of the oven, hot. 

The door opened a moment later and Arthur shivered against the invading gust, wanting to frown at the guest who’d allowed it in:

Eames.

Arthur did frown then, hard, and hunched down in his chair, like bad posture might disguise him. It didn’t matter, though, because Eames didn’t pause to survey the room. He walked in like he knew the very bones of the place, like he belonged, collapsing into the cafe’s welcoming embrace, somehow entirely at home in its threadbare rugs and stuffing-loose chairs, sagging beams, scratched tabletops.

Which he shouldn’t be, Arthur thought. This place was all wrong for someone like Eames, who surely belonged at The Grand Cafe, somewhere that at least pretended toward ambiance. Or better yet, somewhere underground, plush, gilded, that required a password whispered in  L atin into a slit in the door. 

But for some reason Eames was here, and Arthur had to admit, he looked transformed, passing those few steps from the door to the counter. H is shoulders relaxed, his face softened. It was peculiar and fascinating to witness, this shedding of something—someone.

The women behind the counter straightened up and beamed at him, grabbing at his cheeks with her dry, warm hands, pinching them playfully. 

“You’re late. And looking half-starved to boot,” she said, settling her hands back on her hips. Her face was bright, teasing. 

“Maggie,” Eames began, almost bashful. He dropped his head, scuffed his boot against the floor. 

“You work too hard. You work yourself too hard.” She made a shooing motion and Arthur didn’t follow—was she chasing him out? But no, Eames grabbed up her hand and kissed her knuckles. She swatted at him with her free hand and he laughed, a sweet note that rippled across the the room like a wind chime. She joined him, deeper and profound, and Eames backed away and dropped ungracefully, in profile, into a chair at a small table sidling up against the far wall. The woman shook her head and disappeared back into the kitchen. 

Arthur  sunk further into the cock-eyed armchair in the corner and  watched as Eames withdrew a large, flat book from his bag. A set of pencils. A grubby, bulbous eraser. Eames flipped the book open and hunched over a page, began to sketch. His focus  was singular for a minute, five minutes? Until the woman appeared at his elbow with a saucer of tea and a plate of sweets from the display case. He beamed up at her, thanked her, and Arthur realized then that Eames had never ordered. She’d just known. 

Arthur was captivated, confused. His head almost ached with the disparity—Eames at the pub, cocksure and languid; and Eames here, demure and kindly. Since that night Arthur had constructed a picture of just who was this “Eames”—designer chic, money on the counter, a man who inspired caution, warnings from friends. People were more than eager to tell him all about the set he ran with, the Bullingdon Club: a handful of boys, the very best handful, they would surely say. Their surnames came from Burke’s Peerage, Parliamentary rosters, newspaper headlines, building dedications. Portraits of their grandfathers and great grandfathers hung in public spaces, not mementos but history, art. They did not _want_ in life, and they were not told _no_. They smashed up dining rooms, country estates, burned money before the eyes of the wanting. They reigned now only in their minds ; but one day they’d reign outside of them: cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, Prime Ministers. They’d rise through the ranks like their fathers and their fathers’ fathers. 

But here, in this tucked away little cafe on the far edge of the university, Eames sat quietly alone, comfortable, slurping his tea, smudging his sketch with his blunt fingers. Arthur lost himself for a while, watching. 

“He’s a nice boy,” said the woman,  coming up to Arthur with a tray: pot of tea and a cup, plate of scones, jam, clotted cream.  She mostly blotted out Arthur’s view of Eames, and s he graced him with a knowing smile when Arthur looked up at her, bewildered.

“Yeah?” 

“Been coming in here for years, quiet as a mouse and sweet as pick ’n’ mix, he is.”

The look stayed on Arthur’s face, unbelieving. 

“Lonely though, perhaps,” she said. 

Arthur almost laughed. From what he understood, Eames was lonely for nothing and no one. But she seemed awfully fond of him, and Arthur eventually relented with a nod she could mistake for agreement. His whole body gave a shudder and he held his hands against the porcelain tea pot to warm them. He was always cold these days. 

The woman pointed up at a framed drawing on the wall over Arthur’s head, an obvious, affectionate rendering of herself—her face had been smoothed out, her body verging on svelte. “He did that for me, for my birthday  last year . Had it framed and all. Never did find out how he knew it was my birthday but—well, bless him.”

Arthur looked back over at Eames, who wasn’t paying any mind to the whispering in the far corner, and his heart gave an uncomfortable lurch. 

“That was nice of him,” Arthur said. And it was, and Arthur couldn’t reconcile the Eames everyone else seemed to know (intimately, carnally) and the Eames this woman knew (like a son). 

The wall of Bavarian-looking cuckoo clocks behind the counter began to chime and whistle and coo and chirp, startling Arthur. Three o’clock. _Shit._

Arthur was meant to be meeting Dom in the MCR right now. He had a position paper he wanted Arthur’s opinion on, had promised the first round tonight for his input. How was it already three p.m.?  The cafe must have been further out of his way than Arthur had realized. He’d walked in circles and and curlicues for two hours before his stomach and forced his brain to come up for breath. 

He’d have to go soon, shoot off an apologetic text to Dom and figure out how to get back to the college. But it was so _warm_ here and Arthur hadn’t even touched his scones, or his tea, and there was _Eames_ , looking unfairly beautiful and harmless just a dozen feet away and suddenly it all seemed so unfair. He didn’t want to wake up from this little make-believe world where Eames was serene and beloved, where he ate petit fours like Hostess cupcakes, and maybe Arthur had a _chance_ at something. 

His phone rang, shrill and alarming. Arthur fumbled his bag open and found it: Dom. The other patrons glared at him, except for Eames, who was staring wide-eyed, his mouth a little agape. 

“Sorry, sorry!” Arthur whispered to the cafe, accepting the call with shaking fingers as he rushed outside. “Dom,” he said, shaken. 

“Where are you?”

“I’m…” Arthur didn’t know where he was. “I’m just grabbing a tea.”

“I thought we were meeting at three?” It was a minute past. Dom was more of a stickler than even Arthur was.

“Yeah, of course. I didn’t forget, I just—“

“You forgot.”

“No! I lost track of time.” Arthur paced along the pavement outside the cafe, willing himself not to look in through the window. From the corner of his eye he knew Eames had abandoned his sketchbook, had turned around in his chair and was watching Arthur’s stalk along the cobblestones.

“Well, when can you get here?” Dom asked, exasperated. 

“Twenty minutes,” Arthur said, having no idea if he could deliver on the promise. He hadn’t seen any buses along this street. Maybe he’d run it.

“Yeah, okay. Fine. See you then.” 

Arthur shoved his phone in his back pocket and slunk back inside. He wound his scarf around his neck and shrugged his coat back on, then his bag. The woman brought him a large takeaway cup and helped pour in his pot of tea while Arthur hastily split a scone and piled on clotted cream and jam. 

“Thank you,” he said, taking the cup in one hand, his scone in the other. He risked a glance at Eames, who had stood up from his table, as though contemplating whether he should come over. Arthur flashed him a tight, sheepish smile and left. On the pavement he shoved the scone into his mouth, chased it with a few swigs of still too-hot tea and took off at a jog down the road, knowing he’d be sick eventually. 

Later, sitting with Dom, reading over the same paragraph in his paper three times, Dom gave him a shove. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Arthur said, straightening up. 

“You seem distracted,” Dom said, frowning. ‘Prone to distraction’ was one of Dom’s least favorite characteristics. It was the sign of a weak mind, he said. Arthur blinked, tried to shake himself out of it. 

“I’m fine,” he said. 

But there were butterflies in his stomach, or something like it, and they fluttered on.

 

Mal dragged him to a party on Friday, because that’s what Mal did. It was her duty. Early on she had dubbed herself the “fun parent” and had taken it upon herself to see to Arthur’s socialization. “And when I say ‘socialization,’ I don’t mean tea parties with professors and, I don’t know, visiting dignitaries,” she’d said, throwing her hands up in a lovely French fit. “He needs to go _out_ sometimes, Dom.”

Dom at least had had the good sense to look abashed.

And sure, maybe Arthur should’ve resented the assumption that he never went out, and maybe he should’ve stood up for himself in some manner, but the truth was that he hadn’t gone out much since that first week, when he’d learned a few faces and a few British lagers. So Arthur had stayed silent, had let Mal rant, had eventually, even, relented to let her take him out. Dom hadn’t looked particularly pleased.

“You’d do well not to make yourself so indispensable, mon cher,” Mal scolded. “Dom is not above taking advantage.” She’d hooked her arm through his then, and spirited them away. 

“Dom could join us—“

“No. Tonight you are mine.” Her smile was halfway to wicked, a cherry red slash across her plain face, and Arthur could only blink at her and nod. 

The party, in the way of university parties, was both half-hearted and desperate, thrown together by brilliant so-and-so’s, their heads in the clouds, who couldn’t decide what made more of a statement: To Try (“Shall we do wine? Everyone will think us so sophisticated”) or to Not Try (“Fuck the patriarchy; everyone can fend for themselves.”). The compromise was this: a darkened room, black lights, atrocious music, and decent wine. Arthur sipped from his plastic cup appreciatively. 

On more than one occasion a participant (and the party did feel, oddly, like something you had to _participate_ in), would streak through the room naked save stripes of florescent paint on his torso, triceps, buttocks. And Mal had claimed it would be sophisticated. If she hadn’t been French, Arthur would’ve had a word with her about her taste. 

No, scratch that, Arthur especially wanted to have a word with her about her taste because she was French, but at some point Mal had drifted away into the crowd. She’d seen someone on the other side of the room, she just need to say hello, she’d be _right back_. Surely that had been ages ago. Arthur leaned back against the wall and gulped—for shame! He could hear his grandfather scolding him—his wine. 

There was some noise, a commotion that rose above the rhythmic clash of synthesized sounds and the off-beat, slurred yell-talking of party-goers, and Arthur turned toward it. A influx of people swelled at the door, newcomers, the party growing, someone wanting to cause a scene. Before Arthur even had a chance to wonder or hypothesize, there they were. The Bullingdon Boys, and an entourage. They entered with the unmistakable looseness of limb that screamed “pre-gamed.” A few girls in flimsy heels and too-short dresses swayed against boys who kept them upright with lecherous smirks. 

Eames, of course, was among them, trailing just a little behind and looked in something of a state. His hair was rucked up on one side and his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, as though it’d been clawed aside at some point. His lips were bitten-red and his eyes were glassy, unfocused. There was a bottle of something clutched in his hand. He looked beautiful and a little sick, and Arthur’s stomach lurched at the sight of him.

Arthur folded himself into a corner until the group had moved further on into the room and had been swallowed up by the bodies there, swaying and bumping and wild. He was suddenly struck by the certainty that he needed to leave, that he didn’t want to see just how these boys had earned and maintained their reputation. 

He didn’t want to see the promise of Eames fulfilled, everyone’s image of him fulfilled, the very thing Arthur’s little brain had railed against for a week now, compiling proof that everyone was wrong. But Eames here looked like a ticking bomb, and Arthur didn’t want to witness the explosion. 

So Arthur walked away and he did what he did best: he went to his room and gathered his books and he went to the library, his safe haven above all things, a room containing worlds, multitudes, the answer to questions he wasn’t smart enough (yet) to even ask.

The hours drained away there, tucked away at a cheap wood desk between the stacks. Arthur found more questions than answers, had emptied an entire pen into the blank pages of his notebooks while his brained churned things over, and then, without warning, it was one thirty a.m. and the chimes were playing from a loud speaker to alert drowsing students that the library would close in half an hour. 

Arthur rubbed at his eyes and started to pack up. He gathered up the books he’d pulled down and stood to drop them on a nearby cart. As he passed through the stacks to do so he caught sight  through the shelf of a familiar figure pacing slowly, seemingly aimlessly, down the next aisle.

“Eames?” he said, brought low and vulnerable from too little sleep and too little caffeine and the latent effects, still, of too much wine probably. 

Eames’s head snapped over to him and he narrowed his eyes, on guard. After a long second he seemed to realize who it was who was calling, and he loosened again, a dopey smile coming to his face. He was wearing the same clothes as earlier and he reeked of smoke and vaguely of vomit. His eyes were red-rimmed but belied a degree of sobriety that hadn’t been there earlier.

“You!” Eames said, surprised.

“Me,” Arthur said, more surprised. 

“I’ve been looking for you, you know.”

“Where?”

“Every place I’ve gone to in the past week, probably.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to find you.”

“Why?” It came out more earnestly than Arthur had intended, but Eames just smiled and leaned forward until his chin was resting on the shelf, his eyes just barely peeking over the tops of the books.

“Has anyone ever told you you have the unabashed curiosity of a three year old?”

“Everyone I’ve ever met since I was three, probably.”

“Careful it doesn’t get you killed one of these days, pet,” Eames said, and Arthur blanched.

_“Pet_?” 

“Well you never told me your name, did you?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at least a little bit clever? You couldn’t figure it out?”

“So my reputation proceeds me, does it? _Darling_.” Eames winked. Arthur swallowed and thought it must’ve been the loudest noise in the whole library. 

“Don’t call me what.” 

“But it’s your name. Mr. Arthur Darling of Boston, Massachusetts by way of Occidental, California.”

Arthur flinched. “I know your lot are into legacies and pedigrees and lineages but it’s a dead name, that. It won’t get you anywhere.”

Eames looked at him thoughtfully, carefully, and Arthur did his best not to squirm. He couldn’t explain why he felt tender hearing his name in Eames’s mouth like that, like someone pressing on a bruise—he’d been called as such by greater and lesser men, been called it as he crawled in the mud, as he was spat on; it wasn’t delicate or precious anymore. But it felt like too much, and just when he thought Eames would press the point, would tease him, Eames backed off instead.

“Arthur,” he said, softly, and it brought Arthur back into the room, sharpened his focus on the man standing just a few inches of steel and paper away.

“Arthur,” Eames said again. “I feel like there’s something between us.”

“Stacks and stacks of the history of human thought?” 

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

Arthur huffed a laugh despite himself, and Eames beamed.

“We don’t like each other, remember?” Arthur said, re-setting his face.

“Ah, yes. That’s right,” Eames said in agreement, nodding. A moment later he added, “And why is that again?”

Arthur was silent.

“Right,  right,  because you’re the uptight prodigy from Boston and I’m the promiscuous do-nothing from some crumbling manor in the English countryside.”

“You’ve been checking up on me,” Arthur said, forcing the scolding into his voice. 

“And you on me, I think?” Eames said without accusation. Arthur didn’t deny it.

“What are you doing in the library at two o’clock on a Friday night?” Arthur asked instead.

“Saturday morning, really.”

“Eames.”

“It’s as good a place to be as any,” he obfuscated, and Arthur thought it was meant to look nonchalant, like this was some quirk of Eames’s personality: that he wandered here and there at all hours, unmoored and whimsical. But Arthur thought it was probably only a very particular kind of person that came to a library to be alone and come down off a high on a Friday night; that Eames, probably, had never shown this particular habit of his to anyone else. He looked askance, on the very verge of skittish. 

“Why are you here, Arthur?” Eames asked, as though Arthur, too, was mysterious, and not just an over-achiever with nothing better to do. Deflection, Arthur thought.

“I’m working on a paper,” he said, lifting the burden of interest from Eames. “Struggling with some sources, actually. Sometimes it helps, when the library has emptied out some, to pace around and just pull random things off shelves until I stumble across something inspiring.” 

Eames had no books himself, had no book bag, seemed a world away from a scholar in that moment, his collar still askew, his hair greasy and matted in places, his red eyes drooping now. A second chime  came over the loudspeaker. Fifteen minutes till closing. 

“What’s your paper on,” Eames said. The shelf between them was taking nearly all of Eames’s weight now, and Arthur could feel Eames’s hot, nearly-rancid breath on his face, stealing across the books between them. He tried not to make a face. Eames was watching him wholly and again Arthur felt unfairly treasured under the gaze, like it meant _something_ that Eames was here, bantering with him, beaming at him. Arthur felt vulnerable and wrong-footed in the face of it, and his gut seized up, rejecting the instinct to feel a kind of worthiness from the attention.

“The library’s closing,” Arthur said.

“Arthur,” Eames said, his voice dropping to a whisper. It rang loudly all the same, ringing off steel, echoing along the long, empty stacks.

“Are you alright to get home? Do you need me to call someone?” 

Eames narrowed his eyes at Arthur.

“I’ll be alright,” he said. 

“I’m sure you always are,” Arthur said before he gave a sharp nod and backed away from the shelf. The air felt cold around him. He dropped his books onto the nearest cart and hurried back to his table, where he grabbed up his bag and headed toward the stairs. He risked a look back over his shoulders, but Eames was nowhere to be seen. 

 

The grey receded, and the rain, just for a brief breath, and students flocked outside to loll about on the grass, dragging their books with them. Undulating gardens peppered with limp, young absorbing bodies and bright orange Sainsbury’s plastic bags full of to-go meals and cheap wine. Professors took their lunches on benches, shopkeepers took smoke breaks out on the pavement, their faces turned up toward  the sun, drinking it in. A precious respite, they all knew.

Mal, being Mal, demanded a picnic in celebration. 

Arthur, being Arthur, protested only as much as it was expected of him. Mal liked the challenge, mock as it was; she had built up an image of herself as Arthur’s savior, his Mother Hen, one who drew him out of his own head when he got in too deep, who pushed biscuits and too-sweet milky tea on him when he looked ready to collapse, who forced him to smell the flowers when the clouds dissolved and the sun finally came out.

Mal took care of him, like a grown-up child who missed her babydoll. Arthur, motherless and alone in the world, knew not to refuse. 

She spread a quilt out in a sunny spot in The Grove and  gently lowered herself , dragging Arthur down alongside her; his book-bag, too heavy by half, bumped painfully against his side. There were punters on the river, carefree looking boys knocking into each other’s shoulders, taking turns with the pole, easing themselves along, teeth toward the sun in amazed grins.

“You’re not actually going to study, are you?” Mal said . Eyes closed , she had stretched herself out along the blanket, her head pillowed on her arms crossed behind her head. 

Arthur’s hand froze over the clasp to his bag. He looked around to other groups—girls picking leaves out of each other’s hair and grabbling over the last Hobnob. Books lay spread open and forgotten, best intentions, etc. Arthur withdrew his hand and lay down, feeling the damp grass on his back through the blanket. 

Mal released one arm from under her head and reached out, entwined her fingers with Arthur’s and gave them a squeeze.  

“People will talk,” Arthur said.

“Oh? And what will they say?”

“Terribly untoward things, probably.”

Mal released his hand so she could flip onto her stomach. Propped up on her elbows she grinned down at him and said, “Monsieur Darling.”

“You’re a terrible temptress, Mallory. No one would doubt it.”

“Am I really? How wonderful.” Her white, full-wattage smile matched the sun in how it blinded.

“Dom would doubt it,” Arthur said on second thought. 

Mal didn’t drop her smile, but her face transformed into something gentler, more pleasant. 

“You really think he likes me, don’t you? 

“Mal. You think he likes you. I know he loves you.”

“How?”

“You’re the only thing he cares about that it doesn’t benefit him to care about.”

Mal made a thoughtful noise, and Arthur thought that wasn’t the best answer but it was what had come to mind first.

“Is that love?”

“Of a kind. We can’t all be French.”

“It’s a wonderful thought, anyway,” she said, and laid back down aside Arthur. They were both quiet for a long moment, just the noise of autumn around them, chirps and squawks and the righteous indignation of kids too clever for their own good. Cars on the distant High Street. A small collision on the river, laughter. 

“Mal.”

“Oui, mon petit chou?”

“What happened with Eames?”

Mal’s whole face furrowed, tight and pursed and unhappy. She turned toward Arthur to catch his eye and masterly quirked a single eyebrow.

“The guy at the pub. You know, that night.”

“You know his name?” Mal said. Her voice was careful—accusing nothing unforgivable, but dangerously curious. 

“I—yeah. He told it to me.”

Mal shook her head, as though disappointed by a clumsy, proud toddler. “Don’t tell Dom that.” 

“See—yeah, okay. I mean, I _won’t_. But—why? Why does Dom hate him— _them_ —so much? And you? He’s got a… a reputation, I guess. Right? Where does it come from?” 

“Where does it _come from_?”

Arthur felt too hot, suddenly, the sun too much on his face, Mal’s eyes too much on his face. They were large and skittish, and they never seemed to miss a single thing.

“It doesn’t take very much to get a reputation, Arthur,” she said finally. “And surprisingly less to maintain one. People get ideas in theirs head and they—grow from there, I suppose. Our imaginations do the rest, fill in the blanks, see what we want to see or expect to see. Everythingnew confirms everything else, whatever way we suspect it.” 

“So you don’t know how it started then?”

“You wish to trace the genesis of an idea, mon coeur? Bon chance, I say. Most likely it was nothing more than h e is very good at making people feel special and just as good at breaking their hearts.  S imple and  how  tragic , yes? ” Mal looked at him. “Why?”

“It doesn’t matter. No reason.”

“Arthur, don’t be lonely. You have me and you have Dom. You have us. We will adopt you and keep you happy, our little family.”

“Okay, Mal,” Arthur said, leaning over to kiss her on her forehead, a gesture that felt easy and made her laugh. 

When Arthur went to the library that night, long after the sun had set and Oxford was cold and grey once more, he told himself he wasn’t looking for Eames in the stacks when he walked them. The clock tipped over to one, close to two. Arthur put away his books, gathered his things, and looked about the deserted floor: but Eames was nowhere to be found. 

 

It was two weeks later, on an ordinary weekday afternoon, that Arthur finally found Eames again. Or rather, this time, Eames found him. 

Arthur was in Dr. Charles’s lab. It was early days still, and mostly Arthur was trusted with handling the volunteers—broke students looking for petty cash, locals with the unshakable glassiness of the perpetually under-slept. Arthur checked them in, ensured their paperwork was complete, their release forms filled out. He prepped them to have nodes adhered to their temples. For the more long-term work, which saw volunteers spending the night, Arthur sent out the linens to be cleaned and stocked the back rooms with juices and snacks. It wasn’t exactly the cutting edge research exposure Arthur had been hoping for, but he knew these things took time. 

There was no good reason for Eames to breeze into the small, sterile space. Which is probably why he felt the need to. Arthur looked up from behind the stacks of papers on his flimsy particle board desk when the door was thrown open, and his eyes went wide. 

Eames held out one of the neon flyers that were plastered over the science complex and the Oxford Union, asking for volunteers for a study on sleep deprivation and dreaming. He looked awfully pleased with himself.

“What are you doing here?” Arthur asked, too sharply. 

Eames dropped the flyer on the table and tapped the print with his finger,.

“Donating my body to science, aren’t I?” he said with a smirk. 

“The biology building is across the street.”

“Now don’t be like that, pet. It’s a very nice body.”

Arthur’s mouth went dry and he flushed. He grabbed up a clipboard and a pen and pretended to be distracted, making false notations on a blank survey form. Eames chuckled , reading clean through the gesture, and Arthur blushed before slamming the clipboard back down.

“This is ridiculous, Eames.”

“I rather think sleep disorders are a serious issue.”

“You don’t have a sleep disorder,” Arthur said, running a hand over his face in a show of exasperation. 

“How do you know?” Eames said. He flashed Arthur a curling smile that wavered between smug and  endearing and Arthur didn’t understand how it was possible he found the look so damn _cute_.  

“I know you’re just here to see me.”

“Don’t you have an awfully high opinion of yourself, Arthur.” 

Clarissa, the study coordinator, slight and serious and Arthur’s senior by two years, shouldered her way into the room from the back lab, her arms full of system printouts. She dumped them on to Arthur’s desk with a huff of relief: they were his problem now, to sort and collate and file and draft an initial report on.

She turned sharply and eyed Eames. “I thought that was the last of them,” she said to Arthur. 

“Walk-in,” Arthur explained. He wasn’t sure why he was humoring Eames; he was pretty sure the man wasn’t actually going to consent to being kept awake for uncomfortable stretches of time in the name of science, just for the opportunity to push Arthur’s buttons, but who knew. Eames would be someone else’s problem if he decided to go through with it; Arthur wasn’t running the study. 

“Have you done an intake evaluation?”

“Not yet. Like I said, he just walked in—“ he started. She held up a hand to stop him.

“Just have him fill out the questionnaire, please.” She gave Arthur a brief nod, acknowledged Eames even less, and retreated back through the door she’d just come from. They  stayed silently for a moment in the empty room. 

“So,” Eames said slowly, rocking back on his heels. “Are you going to give me the questionnaire?”

“Eames. Stop this.”

“Stop what?” Eames schooled his face, the picture of wide-eyed innocence.

“Stop playing at… whatever it is you’re playing at.”

Eames narrowed his eyes. “Who said I’m playing?”

Arthur rolled his eyes and huffed out an unconvinced breath. He reached for a stack of forms and secured one to a clipboard before handing it to Eames. “Have a seat over there. Fill this out.”

Before Arthur could anticipate it, Eames reached over the desk and plucked a pen out of Arthur’s coat breast pocket. He flashed Arthur a wicked smile and then did as he was told, retreating to the far corner. He dropped into a chair and threw  his bag into the seat next to him, settling in, while Arthur began sorting the mess of printouts on his desk. Arthur risked a disbelieving glance at Eames every few minutes out of the corner of his eye, but Eames seemed intent, and kept his own head down, focused on his  task . 

When he finished, Eames jumped up and handed the clipboard back to Arthur, and then stood there, hovering, while Arthur marked it.

“So. How’d I do?”

“It’s not a test. You can’t do well or poorly.”

“I bet I did really well.” 

Arthur paused to glare at Eames a bit. 

“Why do you dislike me, Arthur?” Eames asked, not at all offended, apparently, b y Arthur’s surly look. “Do you even know?”

“I have a pretty good idea,” Arthur said. 

Eames moved around the desk and Arthur reluctantly swiveled to face him. 

“Oh, I bet you do. And who gave you that idea?”

“No one _gave_ me the idea.”

“Because I don’t think it was me,” Eames said,  folding his arms across his chest, showing some defensiveness at last. “And if anyone were to give you an idea about me, I should think it should be me.” 

Arthur mentally sputtered, unsure how to respond to the accusation.

“Yes, I thought so,” Eames said. “Someone planted it… right… there.” He leaned forward and tapped his finger against Arthur’s forehead, overly dramatic and overly close, and Arthur flinched. 

“Get off of me,” he said half-heartedly, shoving Eames a step back. 

“I suppose you dislike me on principle. I bet you’ve said exactly that to you rself , ‘I dislike him on principle.’ But are they even your principles? Or are they maybe, I don’t know, Dominic Cobb’s? I can’t do anything about my parents having money, you know.” Eames ran his hands down the front of his shirt to drive the point home: Tom Ford, a soft brown plaid and perfectly pressed, barrel cuff. Arthur felt the wear of his own, a cheap polyester blend with a snag along the collar, and he hated it. 

“I don’t just let other people think for me,” Arthur said, almost angry. Angry that someone would accuse him of blind obedience. Angry that he couldn’t completely deny it. 

“No, pet, I don’t suspect you do. You wouldn’t make a very good scientist if you were so keen to blindly accept someone else’s conclusion.”

Eames leaned against the desk in a show of casualness, crossing his straight legs out in front of him at the ankle.

“Maybe you think I’m distasteful for some reason, pretentious, I don’t know. You think I kick puppies and burn money in front of tramps. Whatever it is, you have a theory. But only that. Has it been substantiated at all? Do you have evidence gathered through experimentation and observation? Surely you wouldn’t accept something that couldn’t be replicated and peer reviewed?”

“From what I hear you’ve been plenty peer reviewed,” Arthur said, not quite under his breath in the quiet room. 

The truth was, Arthur had no reason to trust Eames. But Eames was also right: he had no reason not to. Arthur had Dom’s bitter word and Mal’s sad one, which weren’t nothing, but maybe weren’t _everything,_ either. Was it fair of Arthur to accept his own distant view of Eames as truth, separate from the man himself, and ignore how undeniably colored it was by the bruising clash of Eames against someone else’s life?

A small something inside of Arthur told him he was being too easy, that he wasn’t being his usual critical self, wasn’t evaluating this situation from all angles. But then he thought, maybe this was how the other half lived, somewhat carelessly and bravely, and maybe that was why they all seemed to smile so much more than him, why life seemed so much more vivid and full of things to taste and explore. 

He’d been serious his whole life. His mother had tried to love it out of him and it had backfired, because he’d lost her and learned how much more that sort of thing hurt, when love was involved. But maybe, with Eames…

Arthur could be Dom, bow-tie neat and razor sharp, brilliant but stuck forever in an ivory tower while the artists with wild hearts, like Mal, like Eames, left them behind. Dom, who thrived in places like this and who would rot and fester in places like this the rest of his life, whose brilliance would be lost to the back of stale libraries, if someone didn’t drag him out kicking and screaming first… 

Dom, who loved Mal in his own lacking way. Loved her as he knew how, which was _painfully_ and _distantly_. Dom, who could be the man Mal wanted him to be—a man Mal could love, too—if he’d only let himself. But Dom wouldn’t let himself . T hought it was against the rules. Arthur saw how Mal looked at Dom, how Dom looked at Mal, saw the _potential_. Together: Discipline and abandon, shrewd and lovely, both curious. Arthur knew that them not being together could be one of the minor tragedies the world would never know.

Arthur could be Dom. Or he could be something else.

And the thing was, Arthur had never really wanted to be this, anyway. 

Eames grinned at Arthur, salacious and unapologetic for it, and said, “So tell me, Darling. Where’s your scientific method?” 

 

In the back room Arthur directed Eames to lie down on a stiff examination bed covered in loud, crinkling paper. 

“I admit this isn’t how I imagined our first time,” Eames said, wiggling until he was comfortable.

“Shut up, Eames, and lie down.”

“Bossy. I like it.”  

Arthur ignored him and went about swabbing Eames’s temples, attaching the nodes, powering up the lumbering machine in the corner. 

“We’re just doing a preliminary scan here, a baseline recording of your waking brain waves. If everything looks normal, we’ll get you on the schedule for the study,” Arthur said by rote. 

“So you’re just going to have a quick peek at my subconscious.”

“What? No, that’s not what we’re doing doing at all. _You_ _can’t_ _even do that_ ,” Arthur said, surprised. 

“Shame.”

“What? Why?”

“Maybe then you’d see me for who I really am and you’d finally trust me,” Eames said, and Arthur couldn’t tell what his tone was. Wistful? Facetious? 

“Right. If you really need your subconscious examined I know a few first year psychology students who I’m sure would love to discuss Freud with you,” Arthur said in lieu of untangling what Eames meant. 

With that, Arthur stepped out of the room and allowed Clarissa to come in and begin her examination. Back at his desk Arthur resumed sorting through the piles of data. He had a lecture in an hour and needed to eat something beforehand; he probably wouldn’t see Eames before he had to leave, and Arthur thought that was probably for the best. He felt oddly exhausted, confused, exposed. He needed time to recoup. 

Before he left, Arthur grabbed Eames’s bag from where Eames had left it on the chair by the door, and moved it behind the front desk with a quickly jotted note to the next student coming in after  him : _Volunteer’s._

The bag was open, though, and when Arthur set it on the ground, it tipped. Eames’s sketchbook slipped out, familiar to Arthur only vaguely, from the coffeeshop. Put it back and walk away, Arthur told himself. It was Eames’s personal property. It was private. 

Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was full of drafts of studio project, assignments, rough and meaning nothing at all.

Or maybe it was the glance into Eames’s subconscious he’d so wanted Arthur to see.

Arthur flipped it open before he could argue with himself anymore. Landscapes, the Oxford skyline with Magdalen Tower tall and proud, old hands, a bottle of Guinness. Nonsense doodling, or was that abstract art? Arthur had no idea. A few pages struck him as familiar, the shapes of plump Roman bodies and angels in the clouds. Portraits in dated clothing. Flying machines and the Vitruvian Man. He kept flipping until he reached reached the final sketch, and then he stopped. 

It was of Arthur.

Arthur, hunched over a pile of books at a table (in the library? The background was unfinished), his hair falling in his face. His eyes looked tired but determined, and he was biting the end of his pencil. 

Eames had sketched him.

Arthur slipped the book back into Eames’s bag, righted it, and left. 

He didn’t say anything to Dom when he collapsed down next to him in the MCR that night, like he hadn’t said anything about that night in the library. He’d thought about it, just to see what Dom would say. He considered letting it just be some story he told, something for them to share and laugh over. “Hilarious, right?” he’d say, and Dom would roll his eyes and say, “Pathetic,” meaning Eames, but maybe secretly Arthur, too. 

But Arthur didn’t want to make a joke of it. He wanted to keep it, untarnished, and let it be whatever it was. There was something sweet to the whole thing that Arthur was too scared to explore just yet, but knew Dom wouldn't see it that way, and he’d ruin it. Solid, practical Dom, who would have Mal for himself the second he showed her his supposed true artist's heart; Dom, who couldn't do it, couldn't see the world in shades of rose and wonder. Nothing was romantic to him.

Other grads filtered in and out around them, too exhausted to venture far for the night. The TV was turned to a talent competition and someone was passing around a package of dark chocolate digestives. Arthur ate two and contemplated a third, until Dom harmlessly poked him in the stomach, told him to  “ leave some for the rest of us. ”

Dom wasn’t watching whatever was on the TV; he had the _Times_ open across his lap, which sat on top of _The Guardian_ , which was hiding _Le Monde_ and another underneath, maybe _Dawn_. Because Dom never quite let up. Oxford was filled with the type, fiercely studious, wide-eyed, hungry; but Dom, he was different somehow. Arthur hadn’t quite figured out how, yet, but he wondered if he might rue the day they met, when he did.

When he poked Arthur it was a warning; not of gluttony, but of sloth. He was warning him off of becoming too much _this_ , someone who could compartmentalize, who did their coursework like it was their 9-5 and crashed down in front of the TV or in a pub to turn off at night. Someone who masticated sugary, processed foods, thinking of boys with beautiful mouths, when he could be _so much more_. 

Arthur didn’t go to the library that night, but as a compromise he stayed up in his room reading until his eyes burned, until he eventually, close to three a.m., fell asleep at his desk and dreamt about being enough, just as he was.

 

All week the rain had forced Oxford inside, crowding the cafes and libraries and reading rooms and nooks. Everything smelled vaguely of damp, and the ancient radiators rattling in every room succeeded in making things muggy, if not exactly warm. Arthur got a cold, which he refused to acknowledge aloud, and added a glass of orange juice to his usual breakfast of black coffee and porridge. 

It was the middle of the afternoon and the library thrummed, as much as a library could thrum, with life, full of restless, fidgeting bodies. Arthur hated it immediately, the press of so much distracted thinking, the tap of listless pencils on desks, papers being shuffled. The tucked away table in a far corner on the seventh floor, the one Arthur could always count on for its built-in isolation, had been infiltrated by a study group. He wanted to growl and scatter them, but just stopped short.

But finding anywhere else to study would necessitate going back out in the rain, and Arthur was sick—literally—of never being dry anymore. So he reluctantly claimed the next free table he could find, and pulled his sweater tightly around himself. 

He was bent over his reading, engrossed at last and nearly warm, when a closed book landed suddenly on his desk with an aggressive slap.  Arthur startled and nearly toppled out of his chair in alarm before he thought to look up and see where it’d come from. 

Eames.

Of _course_. 

He was beaming down at Arthur, somewhere between smug and eager, not unlike a puppy dropping a fetched stick at his master’s feet, Arthur thought. He blinked the image away, because Eames was not a _puppy_. He was a man, potentially clever and potentially frightening, and standing over Arthur with an unknowable glint in his eye. Broad chested, immaculate in a deep navy cashmere sweater, his hair sticking up in back like a tired child. His uneven teeth clenched and on display, so damn pleased.

“What’s this?” Arthur said, picking up the book and breaking eye contact with Eames to examine it.

“I thought it might help you with your paper.”

“My paper?”

“That one you told me about before, that you were struggling with. I overheard some students going on about it after some lecture and I thought, I don’t know...” Eames trailed off, suddenly looking bashful.

Arthur turned the book over in his hands, flipped it open to scan the table of contents.

“So. What do you think?” Eames asked, when Arthur didn’t say anything.

“That paper was due last week. I’ve already turned it in.”

Arthur looked up just in time to see Eames’s face fall, his brow furrow. He cleared his throat and looked away from Arthur, pulling on an air of indifference.

“Oh. Right.”

“But this looks interesting,” Arthur said, in consolation. He flipped through the pages, noting chapters on the neuroanatomy of dreaming, Hobson’s Activation-Synthesis Model and dopaminergic activation.  It looked _really interesting_ , in fact, and Eames had found it for him, had presumably gone out of his way to track it down. To track _Arthur_ down. 

“Yeah?” Eames asked, his voice betraying something like self-consciousness. 

“Yeah,” Arthur said, more eager. “Anyway, knowledge is never a waste.” He looked up and caught the tail-end of Eames’s relieved smile, how his shoulders loosened. “Thanks for this.”

“It was nothing,” Eames said, and Arthur merely nodded, understanding that Eames needed to believe that on some level, or needed Arthur to believe it. 

Arthur smiled and slipped the book into his bag by his feet while Eames fidgeted on the other side of the table. After a few seconds Eames seemed to come to a decision about something, and he sat in the empty chair beside Arthur, pointedly ignoring the slightly incredulous look Arthur gave him as he did so. 

Eames laid his own bag out on the table and pulled out out a notebook, pencils, a thick volume on, apparently, the study of iconology. Art history. Arthur cleared his throat, loudly.

“Do you mind?” Eames asked, not looking up at Arthur.

“This is a science library.”

“So?”

“You checked out a book from the Sackler library and then came to the science library to work on a paper?”

Eames shrugged and said , finally meeting Arthur’s questioning gaze, “Maybe I like the view better here.”

“You sketched me,” Arthur said after a pause. 

“I did. Does that bother you?”

“When?”

“When did I sketch you?”

“When did you see me in the library. Not that first night.”

“No, not that first night.”

“When then?”

“You spend a lot of nights at the library, Arthur. So do I,” Eames said, only mildly defensive. Mostly he sounded resigned, and Arthur thought the whole thing made no sense at all, as Eames had no reason to be in the Radcliffe library in the first place. He was studying Fine Art, Mal had said. They were on the same course. 

“You never came over. Never said—“

“What, hi? Would you have wanted me to?”

“Why did you sketch me?” It was Arthur’s turn to feel vulnerable. 

“I like beautiful things. Does that bother you?” Eames’s eyes glinted: a challenge. 

And the thing was, it _didn’t_. 

By all rights it should have, maybe. If Dom or Mal or, well, anyone else, had anything to say about it, it would have. Because it didn’t bode well, this kind of singular focus. To be on the receiving end of Eames’s attention came with a the death-knell built-in, assured. Everyone had assured him, even—or especially—when he hadn’t asked. It was stupid to even entertain the thought of seeing this through, and Arthur didn’t entertain stupid thoughts. 

But Arthur wanted to.

Suddenly and vehemently, Arthur wanted to. He wanted to see it through, whatever that meant. He wanted _this_ , whatever it was, where Eames looked at him like he was something precious, and smiled at him like he’d done something to earn it. It almost knocked the breath out of him, the realization, to suddenly want something so strongly. He wanted Eames, this unfairly beautiful boy who could have anyone and had picked _him_.

It would end badly, painfully. Arthur didn’t want to be stupid about that and pretend otherwise. But surely, if he expected it, if he expected that this was the part where Eames made him feel special, and that would necessarily be followed by the part where Eames broke his heart, then maybe could still be fine, in the end. Maybe it wouldn’t destroy him. He could enjoy it, just for a little while; sweeter for its finiteness. 

Could one enjoy the feeling of flying if one knew it’d require a crash landing?

Arthur was going to let himself find out. 

His eyes met Eames’s, bright and unafraid.

“Not at all,” he answered.

Eames licked his lips and smirked. “Do you want to get out of here?” he asked.  Trying again, less certain than before, but hopeful. 

“Is it still raining?” Arthur asked, glancing around for a window.

Eames laughed and said, “It’s all that California blood I guess.”

“I’m from northern California,” Arthur said. “It rains plenty.” 

Eames cocked an eyebrow, poised, waiting for Arthur to say more. To share something, tell him a story, maybe; a fond memory of the winter rain in Sonoma County, flooded vineyards and waves crashing in Bodega Bay, violent and steel grey. 

But Arthur didn’t talk about California. It was one of his rules. So he shrugged instead and said, “Let’s go.” 

The rain was driving. Unusual cold sheets whited out and blurred the buildings across the street, and overeager puddles lapped up from the street, flooded gravel onto the pavement. The afternoon sky had gone dark, low and grey, leaving only the golden glow of warm, dry rooms in the stone buildings framing them to light the street. 

“Shit,” Arthur said, eloquently, flipping up the collar of his jacket against the rain. Eames grinned at him wickedly. 

Eames looked young in that moment, younger than he was, like the neighborhood bad influence Arthur’s mother might’ve warned him about, had he been the sort of incautious kid who needed warnings. Their eyes locked, narrowed against the water flickering at their faces, and Arthur nodded. Consent. 

Eames grabbed his hand and they ran. 

They ran down Parks Road until it became Cattle Street, pushing through miserable stranglers, knocking into umbrellas, earning a few choice words hollered at their backs. They were both soaked through, and Arthur thought there was no good reason for them to be running like this, that he hadn’t worn the proper shoes for it, his brogues always threatening to slide out from under him. But Eames held onto his hand, held him upright, and kept them moving forward. 

“Where are we going?” Arthur shouted, his voice drowning in the roar of the rain. 

Eames peered back over his shoulder and smiled wide, rain water slipping down his cheeks and lips and into his mouth. He just shook his head, and Arthur wondered if he’d heard him at all.

Past the Bridge of Sighs, and the Bodleian Library, and the Radcliffe Camera—a veritable highlight reel of Oxford streaming past them in blocky shapes of weathered sandstone. Eventually they rounded the corner on the the High Street and Eames stopped them. Momentum carried Arthur into Eames’s back with a wet thud and a stumble. 

Arthur peeled himself away and looked around Eames’s: The University Church of St. Mary the Virgin. It looked shut up and quiet, and the street on either side of them, deserted. Arthur thought the rain was starting to let up, but maybe he was just fully saturated. 

“What are we doing here?” Arthur asked.

Eames pointed up, towards the church tower taunting the clouds. Arthur had to hold his hand over his eyes as a shield against the rain to look up, and ended up choking when the water went up his nose instead. 

“They’ll have closed the tower on account of the rain,” Arthur said, when he’d recovered.

“To plebeians, maybe.”

“And we aren’t plebeians?”

Eames ignored him and started off, edging around the far side of the church. Arthur followed after a minute, equal parts curious and exasperated and confused. Arthur found Eames kneeling at a small side door, his ear pressed against the wood while he jiggled something in the lock. 

“Wait. Are we breaking into a church right now?” Arthur asked. 

“Depends. Are you religious?” Eames said. 

“No. Not particularly.”

“Then yes, Arthur, we’re breaking into a church right now. Problem?”

Arthur sputtered for a second, utterly lost for words, and before he could really think , Eames was pushing the door open with a triumphant smirk and Arthur was following him inside.

The door seemed to lead into a dank, cramped stone cupboard, which forced Eames and Arthur flush up against one another. Arthur shivered and Eames arched an eyebrow at him.

“Cold,” Arthur said. 

“Sure,” Eames said. 

Music drifted under the next door faintly, something choral and near, echoing off the cloisters. It was beautiful, almost haunting, and it evoked nothing in Arthur beyond that, who had no memories—repressed or cherished or otherwise—of churches and hymns. A heathen through and through, poised to burst into flames any second. He could feel embers in his stomach. 

Eames pressed a finger to his plush lips with a _shhhh_ and led Arthur out, down a narrow back corridor to a staircase. Up and up and up they went, a hundred or so steps, and then out the top. 

Oxford spread out before them on all sides. 

“You took me to one of the most touristy spots in Oxford,” Arthur said. “How romantic.”

“Were you looking for romance, Arthur?” Eames asked, leaning back against the tower wall. He  folded his arms across his chest and gave Arthur a probing look.

“I—“ Arthur wondered if he’d read this wrong, whatever _this_ was. 

“A secret romantic,” Eames said. “Right. Got it.”

Arthur turned away, his cheeks burning. Eames was _teasing_ him.

“Arthur, I—“ but before Eames could say anything, Arthur cut him off.

“—You come up here often?” Arthur recognized the view, and not just from posters in the tourist shops off of the High Street or university brochures. The spires, domes and towers and hundreds of years of human aptitude stacked around them, the building blocks of humanity. Eames had sketched this scene before. Multiple times, in fact. Arthur had seen it in his sketchbook. 

“Often enough,” he said, pushing away from the back wall. “Like I told you: I like beautiful things.” Eames came to stand next to Arthur, leaning forward, his forearms resting on the ledge. He looked out, far and away. “Oxford is a beautiful thing, isn’t it? Kind of seems unreal, sometimes.”

Arthur watched Eames watch the city, drowned and still so stunning. Eames looked like he was still drinking it in, even now, every stone, every plate glass window, every patch of green and patch of dirt. Like he couldn’t believe his luck that he was here. 

“I would think this was old hat to you,” Arthur said. “You know, damp old buildings. Don’t you have a manor house in the country? Family portraits hung in drafty halls?”

It was a joke, or maybe it wasn’t, and Eames gave him an odd look. 

“You really do have quite the picture of me, don’t you, Arthur?” Eames said.

Arthur shrugged and looked away. 

“Why Oxford for you, Arthur?” Eames asked. 

“Why anything?” he said, scratching the back of his neck. He looked out and tried to see what Eames saw, but Arthur had learned long ago not to be too precious about things. Mostly the city looked old and grey and dull. “It was a way out.”

“Of what? ”

“Real life.”

Eames was quiet for a long moment. Finally he said, “Quite right,” and it sounded like a confession. 

Arthur looked at Eames then, tried to really _look at him_ , to see him. Green eyes or grey, where the light hit them, clear today, meeting Arthur’s unflinchingly. His lips pursed, too plush for anyone’s own good, waiting. He held himself easily, like he’d practiced, and his whole body—shapely muscle beneath cashmere, beneath Burberry—was angled toward Arthur, curious, inviting. Everything about him looked so _purposeful_. 

But more than that, more than all of that, Arthur was struck by just how much Eames looked like he belonged here, at the edge of the world, apart from it and looking down, and Arthur knew that feeling all too well. 

Arthur leaned in and kissed him.

 


	3. Chapter Three

The paper in his hands, double-spaced and stapled in the corner, his last name up top, page numbers, everything just right, had taken on an alarming shade of color since Arthur had submitted it to his tutor at the start of the week. He flipped through it, shuddering in his still (always) damp shoes, and winced at the marginalia: cherry red question marks and ellipses, whole paragraphs crossed through. Bloody splotches where pen had leaked through from one page onto the next. 

“It wasn’t a bad paper,” his Course Lecturer said. “It just wasn’t—“

“—Good,” Arthur said. His throat was tight. 

“Wasn’t up to your usual standards,” he said. Arthur thought he was being too kind: two months into the term, did he even have a usual standard? 

Arthur could only nod and stare blankly at the cramped comments. He hadn’t read them—hadn’t even tried to decipher the scrawl yet—he just stared, let the sick parental “I’m just disappointed” feeling settle deep in his stomach like lead. 

“The set-up is fine,” the Course Lecturer continued. “The bones of it are promising. But there’s very little follow-through. Your research is thin, and your argument trails off at multiple, crucial points. There are a lot of unsubstantiated claims.”

The set-up was fine because Arthur had come up with it a week ago, on an unremarkable, dreary afternoon in the Magdalen library. The rain had put him off from venturing outside college, and he’d pored over his lecture notes for hours, lazy in jeans and his MIT hoodie. Dom had been sat at the table opposite, focused, with no mind for idle chit-chat.

Arthur outlined, brainstormed preliminary sources—he’d go to the Radcliffe library the next day to pull many of them. 

But then Eames had happened, and in all the days since he kept happening. He would find Arthur, or Arthur would find him, and Arthur would abandon his books and his notes and his head almost entirely for those chance few hours, pressed close to Eames, tasting the lingering memory of milky tea from his tongue, his back teeth. 

Eames would reel Arthur in by his belt loops—a lazy finger stroking close, so close, but never quite touching—and tuck him into dim corners, pressing his heated mouth to Arthur’s neck, up his jaw. Eames would cradle Arthur’s face in his stubby hands, sometimes leaving lead or charcoal smears on his flushed white skin, and he would hold him still, hold him in place, and stare at him. Eames’s eyes would watch his lips, watch how they parted, dimpling Arthur’s cheeks; then up to his eyes, which Arthur had always thought were small and brown and unremarkable, but Eames stared into them with a look of childlike wonder on his own face all the same, like he might really find something there, a universe waiting to be discovered or the answer to a question Arthur hadn’t heard asked. A minute went by, and another, Eames barely breathing, and then he’d close his eyes and brace himself, fitting his mouth against Arthur’s with such delicate restrain. Arthur let his arms go around Eames, over his shoulders and around his neck, and he pulled Eames closer, pressed. Eames would growl, then, or purr, and his lips would part, his tongue licking into Arthur’s mouth in hungry, hot laps. 

In those moments it hadn’t seemed particularly important, this silly little paper. 

Arthur had stopped listening to his tutor, who was still going on. It was a stupid response paper for a required, introductory lecture. It didn’t mean anything, only that he hadn’t given over hours of his life to prove his own brilliance. Arthur was a scholar. For this precious last year, he would remain one, and his dissertation would be an important one. But this was busywork, and suddenly busywork seemed absolutely, incredibly dull. 

Maybe the lecture would benefit him somewhere down the line if was going to do his PhD, a DPhil. But he wasn’t going to. His dissertation would be the end of the line for him, academically. So what was the point?

It seemed a much better use of his time to test the plushness of Eames’s lips with his fingers and then his mouth, to skate his fingers over Eames’s sides, under his open jacket, back and down until they rested just so on the swell of his enticing ass. Arthur had remained maiden-like in his refusal to be immediately bedded (“Is this about my reputation, darling?” Eames had asked, either playful or exasperated, Arthur wasn’t sure. “Would it help if I said it’s not what you think?”), but his body wasn’t exactly unwilling, and it hurt, sometimes, to slot himself flush up against Eames, the warmth, the heady cologne that rolled off Eames in manly waves. But Arthur had decided to wait, just for a little while, and Eames had had no choice but to relent, and they stayed out from behind any locked doors. 

It was enough, for now, to have Eames’s heaviness draped against him in the stacks at the library, and in a back stairwell at the Rhodes House, or to have his hand tangling with his under the table at the little cafe on the far edge of the university. 

It was enough to make him feel half-wild and so young.

It was enough to make him finally and strangely feel at home in this place, far away from so much else he’d known. 

Arthur smiled to himself, recalling this. Recalling Eames. It was becoming a silly, ridiculous knee-jerk response. When he thought of Eames’s crooked teeth, mapped by his own tongue; the shape of Eames’s skull where Arthur’s nails had scratched; Eames’s solid chest radiating heat against Arthur’s cold palms. When he thought about how Eames’s eyes crinkled and his lips broke apart in a slow, glorious smile whenever he spotted Arthur for the first time. (“Stop smiling like that, it’s scary,” Arthur said. “I can’t help it. I missed you,” Eames said. “It’s only been a few hours,” Arthur said. “I know. Like I said, I missed you,” Eames said.) Arthur would think about it, and his face would flush obscenely, and he would immediately try to cover his traitor mouth with a closed fist, afraid of giving himself away. 

It was becoming a habit. Maybe a problem.

“Is there something very amusing, Mr. Darling?” his Course Lecturer asked, bringing Arthur sharply back into the room.

The whole situation was amusing, if he was honest, but Arthur was not such a lost cause as to begin saying as much to his tutor. He shook his head, straightened up and apologized. His tutor went on, his mild complaints peppered with praise, suggestions. Arthur nodded along, spoke when spoken to, made something of an effort. At the end of the hour he felt fine, his initial shock having ebbed away into the Big Picture. 

None of this would be the end of the world. 

The weather had finally broken over the weekend, and Oxford was dull and almost dry with struggling sunlight. The narrow streets were full again, students and professors, tourists. A veritable thrum, and Arthur was a part of it, a part of the stream moving from here to there, living what might be deemed A Life at last, something quietly his own. Too new to be entirely precious, perhaps, but it was on its way. 

Eames met him outside college with a coffee and an almond croissant (still warm—how miraculous!). Arthur didn’t say anything, barely even flashed a smile, just grabbed at the pastry and bit off an entire third. He groaned around the mouthful and reached for the coffee Eames was holding out, dumbly.

“Careful, if you’re still set on maintaining your virtue,” Eames said, his eyes a little unfocused.

Arthur crooked an eyebrow in question, still working on the bite of croissant in his mouth.

“Don’t look at me that way, darling, you’re the one making indecent noises in public,” Eames said.

Arthur smirked a little, and swallowed slowly, tilting his head back a little to expose his neck better. He watched Eames watching his throat, the muscles working. 

“Lovely,” Eames murmured, distracted.

“You’re such a pervert,” Arthur said on a laugh, when he was able. He leaned in to steal a small, quick kiss. “Hi,” he said against Eames’s lips, at last. 

“Hello.” 

“Thanks for this,” Arthur said, pulling away. Arthur started them walking down the High Street: he had a shift at the sleep clinic that afternoon, and Eames had an appointment. He was following through on his commitment to the sleep study, despite Arthur’s insistence that it was stupid and unnecessary for him to do so. (“But knowledge is never a waste, right?” Eames had said back). Privately Arthur had thrilled at the thought of having these few carved out hours each week with Eames, hours of watching him sleep and waking him up and lulling him back to sleep and waking him up. It felt both lucky and stolen, and a relief that if nothing else, they’d have this time together. 

But Eames had surprised Arthur, each day anew, since he’d first kissed him in the tower. Eames would find him when he was studying, or when he was drowning his exhaustion in tea and cake, and he’d push the world away and breathe life back into him. It was turning out that Arthur didn’t need to covet their time at the sleep clinic, because Eames was going above and beyond in ensuring they had all the time in the world they could want from each other.

It was beginning to feel like not enough, though. But Arthur was trying not to show that to Eames, that potential for clinginess. They walked side by side, not touching. 

“It’s a wonder you’ve lasted this long, darling, as you clearly have no idea how to feed yourself,” Eames said.

“I can feed myself just fine.”

“What’d you have for breakfast then? Go on.”

And of course today was the wrong day to ask that, because Arthur hadn’t actually eaten breakfast that morning. He hadn’t accounted for Eames when he’d initially budgeted his term time, and Arthur was finding it increasingly difficult to find the hours in the day for everything he needed to get done: work and reading and lectures and seminars and more reading and finishing his dissertation proposal and seeing Dom, seeing Mal, making appearances at casual pub hangouts, losing himself in Eames. They all took so much damn time, and sometimes one had to make sacrifices, and today it’d been breakfast, then lunch. 

As if on cue, his stomach growled, unappeased by the quickly disappeared croissant. Eames laughed and shook his head.

“Please please _please_ tell me you’ve had least had a proper fry up since you’ve been in England?”

Arthur shrugged.

“Oh god,” Eames practically groaned. “That’s an actual real life travesty, darling. I’m adding that to the list of things we need to remedy.”

“You have a list of things we need to remedy?” Arthur asked, startled. He wasn’t sure if wanted to ask what else was on it. 

Eames just smiled at him and winked, and stole back the proffered cup of coffee before Arthur had taken a drink. Eames took a long pull of it, smacking his lips. 

Arthur gave him a look.

“We’ll get rid of the evidence before we go inside,” Eames said.

“ _I’m_ perfectlyallowed to have coffee,” Arthur said, stealing the cup back.

“That’s not what Dr. Charles told me.”

Arthur gave him a withering stare. “ _You_ aren’t. You’ve got to fall asleep in—” Arthur checked his watch, “—Fifteen minutes.” 

“Like I said: better get rid of the evidence.” Eames pushed Arthur into a narrow alley and kissed him up against the cold stone of a building. Arthur was amused at the idea of a stuffy old dodger of a professor being just on the other side of the wall. But Eames kept kissing him, and pretty soon Arthur wasn’t thinking of anything else at all. 

Arthur slipped his hands around to Eames’s back pockets and sneaked them inside, urging him closer, until Eames was heavy and warm against him. Arthur chased the taste of coffee on Eames’s tongue, their mouths slotting together with such ease, like this was old hat already. One of Eames’s hands held tightly to Arthur’s hip while the other trailed up his neck, his fingers stuttering at Arthur’s jaw. 

Eames broke away first with a loud, shuddering inhale. He leaned forward for a moment and rested his forehead against Arthur’s clavicle, which heaved with every labored breath. 

“There. Now I smell like almond croissant,” Eames said, his voice sounding wrecked. 

“I’m pretty sure Dr. Charles won’t be smelling your tonsils.”

“That would make things very awkward indeed, as my tonsils are quite spoken for at the moment.”

Arthur lifted Eames’s head from his chest and beamed at him. He couldn’t help it. 

In the lab they were mostly left alone, Arthur having finally proved himself capable of doing more than filing papers and fetching biscuits and cigarettes for Dr. Charles, who kept to himself in the back-most room more often than not, doing god knows what while his students ran the studies that kept the clinic funded. Arthur had seen a few other professors from the Neuroscience department stop in, look through some files, poke about with a machine, but more often than not it was the same few DPhil candidates and Arthur, the one lowly, terminal MSc candidate. 

Working at the clinic was meant to be Arthur’s opportunity to befriend, to whatever degree was possible, Dr. Charles. It was in fact the sole reason he’d taken on the extra work—everyone else on his course was focused on their practicals and introductory lectures, on studying for the Qualifying Exam coming up next month; they wouldn’t start working on their special projects until next term. But Arthur had wanted a head start, believed he would need it if he was going to get the notoriously private Dr. Charles to agree to supervise one of his research projects. 

Arthur had made depressingly little headway. He’d only even _seen_ the professor a handful of times, if that, and the one time he’d summed up the courage to try and confront him about his project proposal, Dr. Charles had paused a few feet outside his office, his eyes glazing over, empty tea mug dangling loosely in one hand. Arthur had watched him from a foot away down the hall, tried to say something, but as soon as his voice cracked, the professor had dropped his mug and scurried back into his office with a definite click of his lock. 

Arthur had grabbed up the mug and sat it on a counter and retreated to the front desk, defeated. 

The machine in the lab whirled in undulating octaves, beeped, spit spools of paper into a pile on the floor—jagged pictures of Eames, sleeping. His brain shooting off in spectacular fits and starts. Eames was beautiful when he slept, Arthur thought stupidly. Of course he was—he was beautiful when he was awake. He was, Arthur had to admit, one of the most beautiful things Arthur had ever been lucky enough to see up close. Eames’s chest rose and fell in a shallow, peaceful rhythm, and his eyes had just begun to flicker behind his lids—he was dreaming. Arthur would have to wake him up in a minute, disrupt the cycle. But for a moment longer he let himself look, from the little wisps of bristles around his lips, peppering his chin, patchy on his cheeks; the tiny freckles across his nose, faint but there, this close; his eyes which, even closed, Arthur knew, saw the world in glossier shades than Arthur ever had, and so loved it in a way Arthur never had, which was it’s own kind of beauty.  

It was unfair, how much Arthur wanted to keep Eames, now that he had him. 

Arthur poked him awake, just below his ribs, where Arthur had learned Eames was most ticklish. Eames jolted awake with a squirm and a laugh and a gruff sort of huff. 

“Very professional,” he said, squinting up at Arthur, who had just flipped the lights on in the room.

“I thought so.”

“How long do I have to stay awake this time?”

“We’re going to do a short one this time, just five minutes,” Arthur said, making a note on his clipboard.

“You look so authoritative standing over me with your white lab coat and your clipboard. It’s sexy.”

“Everything’s sexy to you.”

“Everything about you,” Eames said with a tired leer. 

Arthur gave him a look and shrugged off his lab coat, tossing it into the corner. 

“Oh,” Eames said, his eyes brightening. “Even sexier.” 

“There’s no winning with you,” Arthur said, mock exasperated. 

“I can think of a few ways. I’m very creative, you see.”

“Yes, I’m beginning to get that.”

“Come here,” Eames said, reaching out toward Arthur. He was still lying prone on the table, obviously exhausted and halfway to grouchy. Arthur stepped just close enough that Eames could slip a finger through his belt loop and pull him closer. “Much better,” he said. His fingers idly grazed over the front of Arthur’s jeans. The caress was almost too faint for Arthur to feel it through the denim, but he shuddered nonetheless. 

“Eames,” he said, somewhere between a scold and a beg. 

“We have five minutes you said.”

“Not in the lab.”

“But everything’s so neat and sanitary here. I would have thought that’d be right up your alley.”

Arthur reached down to disentangle Eames’s hand, hoping he wasn’t blushing too deeply. He couldn’t yet, with Eames. Part of him wanted to, but he tried not to let himself go any further than that, than the _want_. Arthur took a deep breath and ignored his instinct to flee out the lab door in juvenile embarrassment. Instead he pulled up a chair beside the table and sat down, clearing his throat. Eames rolled his eyes a little but folded both hands over his stomach with a sigh. He smiled faintly and stared up at the ceiling.

“Did you dream?” Arthur began, focusing on his clipboard.

“Yeah.”

“And what did you dream about?”

Eames squinted a little, trying to recall, before he said, “I’m not sure. I wasn’t myself, though.”

“You were someone else? How do you know?”

“There was a mirror.”

“Do you know who you were?” 

Eames shook his head. “No. Sometimes I’m different people when I dream.”

“This happens often?”

Eames shrugged.

Arthur watched him closely, but Eames didn’t seem too bothered by this. Arthur made a note in Eames’s file. 

“But, like, I’m a different person when I’m with you, too. So.” Eames paused, considered this. “Is that dissociative personality disorder?”  He watched Arthur for a reaction, but before Arthur could say anything, Eames said, “There really is nothing more boring than other people’s dreams, is there.”

Arthur wasn’t sure what he should say to that, but what he wanted to say was this: _I want to climb inside you and know you from the inside out._ Instead he cleared his throat and said, “Time to sleep.” 

Eames’s session concluded a few hours later, as did Arthur’s shift, and they stepped out together. Eames looked a little dead behind the eyes. Arthur, his body having run through its supply of sweet, sweet caffeine—felt the same.

“Lunch?” Eames asked. Arthur glanced at his watch and Eames amended, “Late lunch?”

“I should really head to the library,” Arthur said. “Qualifying exams are coming up, etcetera etcetera.” It was true, but it was also an out for Eames. Arthur had never had anyone who wanted to spend so much time with him, and he couldn’t quite believe Eames wasn’t sick of him yet. 

“You study too much,” Eames said. “You’ll go blind.”

“Oh is that what causes blindness? It seems I was misinformed,” Arthur said with a smirk. 

Eames jumped on it, suddenly awake again. “It’s a conspiracy. Masturbation? It actually boosts IQ.”

“Is that right?”

“Yup. Scientific fact. We had a lecture on it in first year.”

“Fine Art students did?”

“It was a very important lecture.”

“Quite,” Arthur said, mimicking Eames’s inflection. “I’m sure you absolutely took it to heart. Saw fit to put it into practice as frequently as possible.”

“Not everyone is born as devastatingly adept at everything as you are, pet.”

Arthur blushed and gave Eames a small shove. 

“Yeah, okay,” Arthur relented. “So where are you going to take me this time? The Ashmolean? The Bodleian?”

“Are you making fun of my tourist trap seductions?” Eames asked, pretending to be incredulous. 

“Maybe we should go to The Eagle and Child. I hear JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis used to hang out there together.” Arthur stuck his tongue out.

“Maybe I should just take you back to my room. Shut you up that way.” 

“Is that on the list of frequently visited spots in Oxford, too?”

Eames flashed his tired, brilliant smile at Arthur and seized his face to kiss him. 

Arthur laughed and leaned into him, burying his face in Eames’s warm neck. 

“Come back to mine,” Eames said quietly into Arthur’s ear, his hand running up the back of Arthur’s neck to tug and smooth the short hairs at his nape.

Arthur pulled away, his eyes settling on something in the distance over Eames’s shoulder. Skittish, boyish. “I do actually have to study sometime,” he said, nervously touching his own neck where it was still warm from the weight of Eames’s hand. He could feel Eames watching him—there was a weight to that, too; that sort of attention. The unasked question like electricity in the air: why are you playing hard to get? 

Why _was_ he? Arthur wasn’t sure he even knew. Except he did. Some animal part of him—the same part of him that wanted so badly to give in, to let go, to say yes—knew _._ Knew that it’d be over, then. Eames would get what he came for, what he’d sauntered up to Arthur that first night in pursuit of. And what would Arthur have then to keep him? He had one card and they both knew it. But until Arthur played it, they’d also have this: the chase. And the chase was fucking glorious, too. 

Arthur gave him a look and Eames relented, wrapping an arm around Arthur to keep him close.

“I just want to have you while I can have you,” Eames said softly.

Arthur knew the feeling, but before he could think of how to say it, Eames stepped back suddenly and withdrew his phone from his pocket. It was vibrating loud enough for Arthur to hear, but Eames didn’t immediately pick it up. 

“Yeah, okay. Go study then,” he said distractedly. He looked back up at Arthur and offered a generic smile before pressing a button and raising the phone to his ear. “Ali!” he shouted in greeting, his face strained with rallied animation. He threw up his hand, a vague wave toward Arthur, and sauntered off. 

Thursday nights were for pub quizzes, spilled beer and half-eaten crisps bags and the group sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, hunched over their answer paper. Low-decimal discussions, the occasional spark of disagreement—who was the post-grad here? The expert? Who had done their undergraduate at Yale or Stanford or Cambridge? Who had only graduated with a two-one?—the boastful tug-of-war of certainty, at their table and each one surrounding. Someone ordered chips and kept the plate to themselves, slapped hands. 

Arthur sat sandwiched between Dom and Mal, exhausted and faraway, his eyes lost to the drying patches of sloshed-over Strongbow. A voice echoed through a cheap microphone on the other side of the room—a question was asked, maybe—but Arthur couldn’t redirect his focus in time to catch it. 

Dom nudged him gently in the ribs. Arthur looked up, dumb for a moment, and blinked. 

“Well?”

“What?” Arthur asked. The table had gone quiet, their collective focus falling on him. Waiting, clearly.

“American pop culture. That’s you.”

“That’s me?”

“That’s your strength.”

“How did American pop culture become my strength? Why isn’t science my strength?”

“Because Marcus is doing his DPhil in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry and he wouldn’t be able to name a Backstreet Boy if his life depended on it,” Dom said. 

“But I could?” Arthur asked. When no one responded, he sighed. “Was that the question?”

Dom leaned away and muttered something to the Greek and/or Roman History MPhil on his other side, who scribbled something onto their answer sheet. The gesture put Dom’s back to Arthur, and it felt like a kind of dismissal. 

Arthur felt suddenly, unfairly lonely. The more he watched people, how easily they made each other laugh, or blush, or hide smiles behind near-empty pints.  Bright eyes, legs pressed close under a table, fingers playing a symphony over someone else’s skin. Arthur wanted that like he never had before—or maybe he was only finally allowing himself to admit to that want. He leaned back in his chair, let his arms go around himself protectively, petulantly, and he wondered what it would be like to sit at a table like this, with these people, and make eyes at Eames; to be the someone who laughed loudly and leaned in close to have something whispered in his ear that was just for him to hear—a joke, a secret, a declaration. Eames would smell like damp wool, like Harrods, and he’d keep his eyes and hands on Arthur all night, quiz be damned. The others would roll their eyes and Mal would cluck cutely, in her French way, murmuring something to Dom that wouldn’t betray jealousy, exactly, but—admiration? Longing. To have what he and Eames had.

Except it wouldn’t go that way, because. Because.

Dom would never stand for it. Mal, for once, would agree with him. 

Malpatted Arthur on the wrist, consolingly, before turning back to Dom. Her head was only ever vaguely in the game—less so than Arthur even—but she could drink them all under the table and she liked to tag along to remind them of it. And if one night she felt like answering an obscure question about Degas, lucky them.

Arthur wondered where Eames was just then—where and with whom. It was a tortuous train of thought and Arthur wanted to derail it as soon as it started, but off it went. 

The fact was: they spent most nights apart, and Arthur never asked what Eames got up to and Eames never shared, and that was a kind of agreement they’d come to without ever saying a word. Arthur had silently begun to fear that it was only a matter of time before he caught Eames out in a pub like this, noticed him lounging in a dim corner, not alone. Inevitably Eames would be liquor-loose and tucked against someone faint and beautiful, and without ever noticing Arthur, Eames would leave with this pretty face, and Arthur would know exactly where they were going, and he wouldn’t be able to say anything the next day or ever, and he wouldn’t even be allowed to be upset.

It was another one of their silent agreements.

Arthur wanted to sleep with Eames. Of course he did. But he knew that as soon as he did, he’d be put out on the doorstep like so many Oxfordians before him. Of course he would. 

That’s how it’d have to happen. He’d gone in knowing that. But it was too soon.

And Arthur wanted to keep Eames for just for a little while longer. 

“You look tired,” said Mal, sipping at her wine. Her teeth were dingy from drink and still she was lovely, her eyes glassy and imploring. “It’s too early in the term to look so tired.”

“Term will be over soon enough.”

“Yes, but why do you look half-way-through finals tired? Are you sick?”

“No, Mal. I’m fine. Just tired. We’re all tired. Isn’t that, like, a requirement? They probably kick you out of the university if you ever get more than five hours of sleep a night.” 

Mal tsked. “You believe too much your own hype.” She considered Arthur again, tilting her head dramatically, practically cooing. 

“No, I do not think this is tiredness, after all. If I didn’t know any better I’d say you were pining.”

Dom turned back, suddenly interested again. “What does Arthur have to pine after?”

“Not _what_. _Whom_. Arthur is flesh and blood. He may pine.”

“Arthur is not pining,” Dom said sounding scandalized. “You’re not pining, are you?”

“I’m not pining,” Arthur said.

“See, Mal. He’s not pining. He has more important things to do. Stop trying to...to...corrupt Arthur with your—” 

“With my what, Dom? My French sentimentality, I suppose?” 

Dom was quiet, scolded.

“Yes, what an absolute horror that would be,” Mal said. “That I might encourage Arthur to _feel_ something. When he has so many other more important things to do.”

Arthur kept very still and let Mal’s glare skim across him to Dom on the other side. The hairs on the back of Arthur’s neck stood on end, and he wanted very much in that moment to not be caught—quite literally—in the middle of their not-quite-lovers spat. 

“Maybe Mal’s right,” Arthur said amicably. “Maybe I’m coming down with something. I should probably head back and try to sleep it off.”

“Dom can see you home,” Mal offered.

“I’m perfectly capable—“ Arthur began.

“—The quiz isn’t even finished. Why do I have to leave?” Dom sputtered.

“Because I do not believe I want to look at you anymore tonight, Dominic Cobb,” Mal said with a finality of a long-suffering Frenchwoman.

Arthur grinned a little into his glass as he swallowed down the last of his beer, temporarily warmed by the comfortable ebb and flow of their animosity, the push and the pull of their affection. It had teeth, a bite; it would not be easily wrangled and corralled, but Arthur was certain it would one day, eventually, settle, like dust after a windy night. Things might be misplaced, made grimy by the kicked up dirt, but they would learn, Dom and Mal. They would learn to create something beautiful, together in the heart of the storm.

Eames was making Arthur into a romantic.

Arthur and Dom grabbed their coats and ducked out with hands held limply aloft in goodbye. The night was dark and crisp, a ruddy cold against Arthur’s nose and cheeks. It was not yet so late, and the winding university streets were lit here and there with the golden hum of pubs and the occasional burst of drunken laughter. A pair of girls passed him and Dom on bicycles, whistling. Every dozen or so yards, a narrow window in the stone buildings flanking their walk would cast its dull glow onto the street, and Arthur would wonder every time what was behind the single-paned glass. Usually he assumed it was someone studying, and he felt newly guilty that it wasn’t him. 

“You seem distracted,” Dom said.

“No, I’m fine.” Arthur said.

“How’s the sleep clinic?”

“Fine.”

“Is Dr. Charles going to supervise one of your projects next term?” 

Arthur felt unfairly annoyed at Dom, then, who only knew how to talk about one thing: work. He turned pub quizzes into study sessions and casual drinks into practice debates and he just expected Arthur go along with it, because Arthur didn’t have a choice. This was who he’d fallen in with, who had taken him under his wing. It was who Arthur always fell in with: guys who valued their own intelligence above all else, who would become the gears and cogs that ran—that improved—the world, without ever stepping out in the world themselves. It’d always seemed like a safe crowd, to Arthur. 

When had Arthur decided he wanted something safe?

Eames was something else entirely—his _world_ was something else entirely, something Arthur had only ever glimpsed, from the outside. Polished and glittering, sharp-edged and sweet. Arthur could just barely imagine how Eames and his family, his friends, really lived—careless lives made dangerous by the assumption they were owed the world sliced up on a platter, golden carpets laid out before them, stretching out wherever they wanted to go. Richness in taste, in touch, in everything. Once upon a time it would’ve made Arthur sick—maybe it still did—but part of him, suddenly, ached to know what was behind the curtain, what had created a creature like Eames. 

“So,” Dom tried again. “How are you doing?”

“Is this ‘mentor’ talk?”

“No. It’s friend talk. Isn’t it? Aren’t we friends?” 

Arthur thought about how Dom collected people, like he was crossing off an inventory he kept in his back pocket, and Arthur didn’t know if that was the same as making friends.

Maybe Dom had got stuck on the _influencing people_ bit, when he was young and impressionable, and Carneige’s book was the only tool he had. Maybe he never learned the difference. Not that Arthur was any sort of expert on friendship: he’d always found it easier to keep to himself. If you started with the ending in mind—which Arthur so often did—if you looked at something and only saw its finiteness, it was hard to think anything, or anyone, was quite worth the effort.

Somehow, sometimes, people thought Arthur was worth the effort. Dom had. 

“Sure, we’re friends,” Arthur said.

Dom was quiet for a moment, as though he wasn’t sure how to deal with this new responsibility. Their footsteps caught and echoed along the narrow, cobbled alley. Despite everything Arthur thought of Dom, he was, at heart, this: a man willing to take the road less traveled to get back home.

“Have you really never seen _Point Break?”_ Dom asked eventually. 

Arthur stared at Dom, a deer in headlights, through the dark. 

“Back there—the quiz.”

“That was the question?”

“No, that was the _answer_.”

“Wait. So _you’ve_ seen _Point Break_ ,” Arthur asked. 

“It’s basically your responsibility as a Californian, I thought.”

“Occidental is very much not L.A.,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “I’ve never even gone surfing.”

“Actually… neither have I.” Dom sounded like this would come as a surprise, when Arthur was anything but. “So what did you do in Occidental, then?”

Arthur’s instinct was to say nothing; to share a single memory of those good, sweet years felt like it risked ruining all of them, as though memories might spoil if left out in the open air between breaths.  He had tightened the lid on them long ago and tucked away the box where he and he alone could find it. To give something up, to skim just a bit off the top to share—well, if he did it enough, what would he have left in the end? Nothing that was just his own. He would be empty. 

But Dom and him were _friends._ And he knew enough of friendship to know what it required. 

“My grandparents owned a winery,” he said. “I spent a lot of time in the vineyards or in the barrel room, hiding myself away in some oaky-smelling corner to read.”

“So you know a lot about wine?” 

“I know enough to know that most people who say they know about wine, know nothing about wine. I mean, even when you hear about really expensive wine being counterfeited—well, they’re only able to prove it by finding inconsistencies in the labels or the corks or something—nobody in the world can actually authenticate them via taste. It’s kind of interesting actually—“

“—I really don’t know anything about wine,” Dom interrupted awkwardly. If the interjection was rude, Arthur understood there was, underneath, some embarrassment in the admission, as though Dom believed himself—or thought others might believe him—lacking in some fundamental way because of this. Arthur disagreed, of course, but he decided not to embarrass Dom any further by saying so.

“Wine is really pretty boring, actually,” Arthur said.

They walked on for a few minutes more.

“So you’re fine? Everything’s fine?”

“Yeah, Dom. Everything’s fine.” 

It was barely morning and still dark when Arthur, already at his desk, looked up at the sound of a gentle click against his window, as though a breeze was tossing twigs and hard winter berries. He could see nothing through the glass, which in the daylight looked out over a bare, muddy strip of No Man’s Land between the house and the quad buildings just opposite. His desk lamp cast only his own his own reflection back at him.

Two more clicks in quick succession, and then a whisper. Still the wind? He strained his ear and it sounded very much like “Arthur,” but the mind had a way of inventing such things Another click and another “Arthur”—louder now, more distinct, and he leaned awkwardly over his desk to unlatch the window and look down.

The outline of a figure in the garden below. Clean, compact lines and a flash of familiarity in the whites of the eyes, trained on Arthur. 

Eames.

“What are you doing?” Arthur stage whispered. 

“Oh, you know. Just fancied a bit of a stroll along the river first thing in bloody morning. What do you think I’m doing here? Let me up, will ya?” 

Arthur hesitated and said, “I’ll come down.” He withdrew, closing the window tightly. He threw on a hoodie and a jacket over that, stuffed his wool-socked feet into his boots and headed downstairs and out into the garden where Eames was waiting, rubbing his hands before his face as he blew on them. He looked, Arthur thought, liminal. His hair was gross and plastered weirdly in some places, rucked up in others, and his eyes were blood-shot but dull. He was right on that edge: sobering, maybe even damn near sober. His smell was worse than his bite, Arthur thought: a heady mixture of good whiskey and cheap beer caught the crisp morning breeze and burned inside Arthur’s nose. It wasn’t quite 5 o’clock in the morning but it was obvious, unsteady as he was on his feet, that Eames hadn’t yet been to bed. 

“Were you really just throwing rocks at my window?” Arthur said, to avoid asking anything else. The things they didn’t talk about. 

“Romantic, yeah?” Eames grinned sloppily at Arthur. He swayed. Recovered. Cleared some muck from his throat— _lovely_ —and tried again to focus his eyes on Arthur, to set his face just right. 

“Yeah,” Arthur admitted despite himself. He laughed. “Yeah, Eames. You’re a regular Prince Charming.” 

“’S what I always say. Some reason no one believes me.” 

“Baffling,” Arthur said. He stepped close to steady Eames when he began to tilt again. “Come on. Let’s walk a bit, yeah?” Arthur jerked his head and started walking away from the house, toward the path that ran along the river, which would be darker still, and likely deserted. Some things—many things—were easier in the dark, the untrustworthy moonlight an opaque veil for vulnerabilities, the embarrassed flush of schoolboys with their too ripe feelings. And Arthur felt just so, weirdly sensitive and exposed in his utter delight at seeing Eames, at being the place Eames went when he wanted to come back to himself. Arthur could do that. He could be the one to steady Eames.

“Not plotting a murder, are you?” Eames asked, following a few steps behind. “Shame to survive the night I’ve had just to get sunk to the bottom of the Cherwell.” 

“Reckon I have probable cause or something?” 

Eames didn’t say anything, and Arthur turned around to catch Eames’s blank, downturned face. His eyes seemed preoccupied, watching the toes of his boots scuff a resigned forward march in the dirt. As if the trail might announce in the morning: I was here. Please. Remember me fondly. 

“Eames,” Arthur said, startling him into looking up. Eames caught Arthur’s eye and after a brief, dazed moment, smiled brilliantly. Full-wattage. 

“Hello, you,” Eames cooed, like he was just seeing Arthur at last. He stood at the edge of the path, his face palely lit by slats of departing moonlight through the naked trees. Something angelic, otherworldly, and Arthur lost his breath for a moment. The river babbled smoothly just a foot away, and a pair of warblers called to each other from the branches disappearing into the dark.  The air was heavy, damp. It smelled of rotting leaves and swamp. 

“I know where we should go,” said Eames.

Which is how they found themselves breaking into the Boathouse, dim and creaking and really much too-full of _stuff_ for Eames’s liquored limbs. They knocked into punts and pedalo boats, spare oars and netting. Eames laughed at every noise, and Arthur shushed every laugh, and both of them grinned at each other in the grey light sweeping into the place through the grimy windows. When Eames eventually found what he wanted—a row boat, sleekly painted and set apart from the rest of the clutter—they heaved it out onto the river together and slipped aboard.

“Are we going to get into an awful lot of trouble over this?” Arthur thought to ask only after they’d pushed away into the current, Eames steadying an oar on either side of him.

“Where’s your sense of adventure, Darling?” The boat moved slowly through the thick morning mist settling onto the river. 

“Who ever said I had a sense of adventure? Is someone telling dirty lies?” 

“Only the absolute filthiest.” 

“Good,” Arthur said, and moved to settle himself in Eames’s lap, emboldened by the strange opaqueness of the air. The movement was quick, though—too quick—and it set the boat rocking. Eames squealed, nearly losing an oar, and Arthur scurried backwards.

“Or we can just sit back and enjoy the… view,” he said, huffing a laugh. 

“You know what they say about crew boys. Such a notoriously chaste bunch,” Eames said. 

“You’re filthy,” Arthur said, smiling so it hurt. He reached out his foot to knock against Eames’s, and it felt intimate in a way he couldn’t explain. 

The river took them back past Holywell Ford and Arthur sighed at the view, his house, the last of autumn’s reds and burnt oranges giving way to bare, brittle vines snaking across the ancient stone. 

“I don’t miss Boston, except when I see foliage,” Arthur said. “The summers were gross and the winters were miserable. But fall—there’s nothing like Boston in the fall. A gilded city, I always thought. Like standing at the heart of a forest fire that doesn’t burn.” He shivered, the damp setting into his bones. 

“Beautiful,” Eames said, watching him. 

The next day Arthur returned from class to find a piece of paper slipped under his door. He turned it over in his hands and found a watercolor in golds and brick dust, white-trimmed far away buildings and swaths of yellow magnolia trees and crimson-colored maples. Arthur taped it above his defunct fireplace and when he looked at it, he didn’t feel homesick. He felt at home. 

Eventually Arthur remembered: he had things to do. Books to read, papers to write, a future to build from pages of dizzying formulas and the thinking that was best born of long, painful bouts of isolation and wakefulness. Arthur took his lunches in the form of coffee savored in lectures and he napped at his library table, and once he ate an M&S egg and cress sandwich, to off-set the impending burnout.  He didn’t hear from Eames for a few days, but it felt comfortable, somehow. Like he knew, now, they were good. They could go off for a while and busy themselves. They’d find their way back to each other again, eventually.

But when Eames didn’t show up for his scheduled sleep session at the clinic, Arthur was finally, professionally, obligated to give him a call. 

Eames answered just before Arthur expected his voice message to kick in. “Yeah?” His voice was slow and croaky.

“Eames?”

“Darling?” 

“Imissed you at the clinic today. I wanted to make sure you were all right,” Arthur began. “It doesn’t sound like you’re all right.” 

“Is it Tuesday? It was just Friday.”

“It’s Tuesday.” 

“Bloody hell… ‘fraid I’m not feeling particularly well, pet, no. Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I mean, it’s not _fine_ that you’re sick. That sucks. I just meant, don’t apologize.”

“Right, got it.” Eames sounded far away, as though his mind had something more important—cold medicine, maybe—to contend with. 

“I… could come by yours later. Bring you some, um, soup,” Arthur hedged. 

Eames was quiet on the other end and Arthur thought through the silence that he’d misread the whole situation and this was it, this was Eames dismissing him. Eames wasn’t _really_ sick—it was a ruse to shake Arthur off. _Why couldn’t he take a hint?_

“Yeah?” Eames said.

“Yeah.” It came out shaky and Arthur tried again, tried to keep his voice steady and sure. “Yeah, of course. I can grab something at Tesco’s. Do you have a microwave? Or I could microwave it before I bring it over.”

“Microwaved soup from Tesco’s. Be still my beating heart,” Eames said, with a laugh that turned into a dry cough before fading out. 

“You really are sick, huh?”

“No, I’m just avoiding you for my health.” 

“Actually I think that’s exactly what you’re doing?” said Arthur, daring to joke. 

“No, no. I’m doing it for _your_ health. Obviously.”

Arthur weighed the possibility that Eames was lying, that he was still politely trying to disentangle himself from Arthur, against the real possibility Eames was actually just sick. And if it was the latter, did Arthur really want risk exposure? 

He did.

“I’m coming over. I’m bringing soup. Try not to snot all over me when I get there, yeah?”

“And here I thought I was meant to be the romantic of us both.” 

Eames had told Arthur his room was in “Peckwater quad, east wing, top floor, end of the hall,” all of which meant very little to Arthur until the kindly porter at the entrance pointed him in the right, general direction. He’d never been to Christ Church before, not even to visit Mal—the people he knew, they weren’t the sort of hold court in their small, ugly rooms—they wanted to be out in the city, where life still felt old and grand. Arthur hurried through the immediate lawn with his head bowed, keeping to the paths, and made a jog to the left to navigate a deserted corridor and pass through into the next quad. His ineptitude, he was sure, showed, but students were used to guests and tourists, and no one paid him any particular mind. 

He made his way inside and up, and knocked at what he prayed was the right door. 

“It’s open!” called a undeniably phlegmy voice from inside. Definitely the right door. 

Arthur pushed it open and stepped inside. 

So much for small and ugly, Arthur thought, standing in the sitting room for a moment. Of course Eames had secured himself a leftover from the 18th century, all dark oak paneled walls and stone mullioned wrought iron windows overlooking the pebbled quad and the golden masonry beyond. If there had been hardwood floors originally, they’d been ruined sometime in the last few hundred years and replaced with the same grotesque carpet as Arthur’s room—a small comfort, though it was mostly covered with overlapping area rugs of competing design. The furniture was worn leather and gorgeous, and something told Arthur it hadn’t come with the room. Against university regulations, various mediums of art—framed charcoal sketches, watercolors, bare canvasses—had been hammered haphazardly into the walls, which contributed to a kind of refinement most university accommodation lacked. The room felt, in a word, _lived-in._ A gilt, antique clock ticked away on a side-table, two mismatched sag glass lamps glowed atop a heavy mahogany pedestal desk shoved against the far window, its top littered with a dozen small ceramic collectibles. A full crystal ashtray was balanced atop a stack of books on the coffee table alongside empty tea cups with mismatched saucers and empty bottles of—everything: Tanqueray, Don Julio 1942, The Dalmore 18-year-old, Dom Pérignon Brut. A blood red silk dressing gown laid thrown over the back of the couch.

So this was how the other half lived?

Arthur felt small and inadequate amongst such beautiful detritus, standing there in his cheap wool hat and gloves, clutching a takeaway container of soup. He’d done one better than promised and stopped in at the deli a few roads over and gotten Eames some proper chicken noodle soup. 

It seemed almost certainly laughable now. 

When had Arthur forgotten that this was who Eames was? This was where he came from? 

There were two rooms off the sitting room, the doors thrown open to both. Arthur hedged his bets and peeked his head in one and found a—a studio, by the looks of it. The stripped bed was piled high with loose sheets of paper, some torn, some crumpled. Bed sheets were laid across the floor that maybe, once upon a time, had been white; now they bore a smattering of every color, layers of them, dried and flaking. Two empty easels were propped up against one wall, a desk covered in acrylics was pushed against the other. 

“Arthur?” Eames called from across the suite. A bout of coughing echoed through the sitting room, startling him. 

Arthur followed the noise into the second bedroom. It was dim and the air stale, and Eames was grumbling some kind of nonsense from underneath the duvet. Arthur gripped the bedding and threw it back to reveal Eames: grimy, gorgeous, and barely half-dressed. 

Eames squinted up at him and managed a smile. “Ah, pet. I’ve missed you.” 

“I brought you soup,” said Arthur. Part of him wanted to put the container down on Eames’s bedside table and flee; he felt dull and lacking and out of place amongst such nice things, and he hated the idea of Eames looking at him and thinking so, too. Arthur didn’t belong in Eames’s world, not really. 

But then Arthur thought of the studio, which had to—though Arthur wasn’t quite sure _how_ he’d managed it—belong to Eames, and Arthur reminded himself there was more to Eames than a sitting room full of Christie’s art and antiquities. And Arthur currently had the privilege of discovering that. 

“Here I thought I was the poorly one, but frankly, darling, you don't look too well yourself,” Eames said, reaching for him.  

“Just tired,” he said, finally feeling his exhaustion. He put the soup down and began to shed his layers—the gloves and the hat, then the coat, all in the pile on the floor. 

“Staying a while?”

“I’m not a delivery boy.”

“But so many good pornos start that way.” 

Arthur shook his head and grinned. “You need to watch better porn,” he said, and toed off his shoes. He kept out of his own head as he adjusted Eames and his blankets and promptly straddled him. Arthur settled himself low on Eames’s thighs, above his sprawled knees, the thin duvet a barrier between their bodies—if only a theoretical one. 

“Definitely promising,” Eames murmured, his eyes glinting mischievously despite their feverish glassiness. Eames’s hot fingers ran up Arthur’s legs to his waistband and slipped under his shirt just enough to touch the bare skin there, just above his jeans, the trail of soft hair. 

“Is it mono?” Arthur asked. Eames gave him a blank stare. “Glandular fever?” 

“Why don't you kiss me and find out?”

Which should have been a disgusting thought, but Arthur felt despondent and needy, suddenly, and so he leaned down and kissed him, closed mouth and slow. Eames gripped Arthur by his hips and held on, kissing back.

Arthur leaned away to inhale swallows of clean air.  

“Ugh. When's the last time you brushed your teeth?”

“Hasn't been high on my priority list, pet, seeing as how I apparently haven't even gotten out of bed in two days.”

“Maybe warn a guy next time, yeah?”

“Where’s the romance in that?” said Eames. He began to gently pet the crease of Arthur's thigh where his hands still gripped. His fingers stuttered over the denim in slow, hopeful strokes, barely skirting Arthur’s groin.

“You don't have the energy to brush your teeth. I seriously doubt you have the energy for _that_.” Despite the admonishment, he couldn’t help but squirm slightly under Eames ministrations, rocking forward in tiny, unhelpful jerks. 

“People have been known to summon superhuman strength in times of great need,” Eames said. 

A noise low in the back of his throat, his base animal brain sparking, _craving_. Arthur rocked forward again and let his eyes flutter close as his jeans knocked and dragged over the body beneath him. Eames couldn’t be wearing much under his bed sheets, and Arthur nearly whined at the thought of how easily he could lean away, shimmy the duvet out from between them, and _know. Know Eames._ He felt himself grow warm and blush and Eames groaned, weak and beautiful, and there was no rhythm to any of it. Eames’s hands running up his chest, nails leaving marks. Arthur pulled at his t-shirt and lost it over the edge of the bed.

Then Arthur opened his eyes and looked down at Eames, and he stopped so abruptly it was as if the wind had gone out of him. 

Eames was pale under him, and flushed, the hair at his temples matted with a faint sheen of sweat. He was breathing loudly, almost panting, but he looked pained, his eyes unfocused. 

“Don’t stop,” Eames said, biting his lower lip. “Please.” 

“Jesus, Eames.” Arthur rolled off of him and settled on the edge of the cramped twin bed. He put his hand to Eames’s forehead. “You’re hot.” 

“I knew you only liked me for my body,” Eames murmured, leaning into Arthur’s touch. 

“Have you taken anything?”

Eames nodded and gestured vaguely to the bottle of paracetamol on his bedside table next to his phone. “Screw bacteria. _You_ , Arthur, will be the death of me.”

“It’s probably viral.”

“The absolute death.”  

Arthur smirked. ”A little death, maybe. Eventually. If you're lucky. _La petite morte._ ” 

“Oh _god_. ’It is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever know.’ ”

“Far far better? That's awfully big talk.”

“Indeed, awfully big.”

“Is that a promise, Mr. Eames?” 

“You are a saucy minx, Arthur Darling. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

Arthur smiled down at Eames, small but real, flashing a shadow of his dimples. Eames reached up and ghosted his fingers over them fondly, before running his thumb across Arthur’s bottom lip almost thoughtfully. 

“Come on then, lie down next to me in my sickbed. We’ll be like one of those old couples that kick the bucket together.”

“You really arethe romantic one,” said Arthur with an accompanying roll of his eyes, but he nudged Eames over with his hip to make room for himself and laid down, his side pressed alongside Eames’s from shoulder to ankle. 

Arthur tilted his head toward Eames, some remark on the tip of his tongue, but Eames’s eyes had fluttered shut and his lips were parted ever so slightly. Arthur could hear the wet whooshes of air being forced from his lungs, sucked back in; it was the only noise in the room, in the whole wide world, it seemed. In this dim, too-warm room, there was just Arthur and Eames, and the for a little while the world couldn’t touch them, and Arthur wasn’t sure he’d ever wanted to stay in a single moment so much before. Arthur felt _safe_ here, he felt treasured and delightful and, dare he think it, almost _loved_. Maybe it was nonsense. Maybe he was delirious with exhaustion. He rubbed the back of his knuckled against Eames’s, where their hands lay side-by-side under the duvet, and he wanted to _stay_.

“Eames?”

“Shhh,” he mumbled. “Let’s just be quiet and close our eyes for a bit so I can tell everyone we’ve slept together.”

“Ha ha.”

Eames smiled in his not-quite-sleep, and it was a lovely thing, and Arthur dropped off with a picture of it in his mind. 

The air smelled sweetly of boiled carrots and thyme when Arthur stirred some—minutes? hours?—later. He rolled over, foggy and lax with sleep, until his face met Eames's body and he could roll no more. Arthur breathed in Eames's warm, salty skin and boldly, lazily, pressed a faint kiss to the bit of Eames’s torso his lips could reach without much effort. He nuzzled in closer still, and smiled when he felt Eames's hand slip into his hair, his nails scratching his scalp in slow, comforting strokes.

Arthur opened his eyes after a while and stared up at Eames, who had propped himself up against the headboard and was watching Arthur with a peculiar look. 

“There he is,” said Eames fondly. “Morning, kitten.”

“What time is it?” Arthur pulled away just enough to stretch his arms out, his mouth breaking open in a satisfying yawn.

“Do you really want to know?”

Arthur didn't. The room, which had been dim to start, was properly dark now, save the weak glow from Eames's beside lamp—a burnished brass giraffe with its head disappearing into the shade.  Arthur wasn't sure if it was a trick of the amber light, but Eames's coloring seemed less worrisome now, which was a relief.

“Soup’s a bit cold now, but it’s not bad.”

Eames put down his phone, which had been in his other hand, and picked up the container from the table. He raised it to his mouth and took a swig, smacking his lips with satisfaction. Arthur's stomach grumbled jealously, but ultimately he thought Eames needed the soup more than he did.

“So, how’d you manage this suite all to yourself then?” Arthur asked.

“Ah. Kid had something of a psychotic break two weeks into term and they bundled him off back home. Never got a replacement. Lucky for me.”

“And not so lucky for him.”

Arthur squinted into the shadows around the room, still astounded by just how much _stuff_ Eames had. Arthur had come to Oxford with a backpack and a single suitcase, his whole life tucked neatly inside. Eames's existence spilled out from his room, into a sitting room, into a studio, in stacks and piles and mountains. Not to mentioned whatever he’d left behind, at home, wherever that was. Probably Eames didn't travel around with his every possession, like Arthur. The chair in the corner of the room was covered in a heap of dirty laundry worth more than anything Arthur had owned in his life.

Next to an array of discarded newspapers, Arthur noticed two uncorked bottles of wine, their labels barely legible in the dark, but Arthur knew—could immediately recognize—them: Chateau Mouton-Rothschild. He sat up with a start, jostling Eames and his soup. Eames grumbled crankily at the disruption but Arthur was already out of bed and reaching for the wine. He cradled one bottle and looked closer at the label: 1982.

“Is this _real_?”

“Why wouldn't it be real?” Eames asked, his voice gone funny.

Arthur looked back over his shoulder. The lamp light cast odd shadows across Eames's face, disfiguring his visage, but Arthur thought there was panic in it, something choked and simmering under the surface, behind his wary eyes.

“Eames. This is a $10,000... $15,000 bottle of wine.”

“You know wine?”

Arthur considered telling him that he did, that he'd practically been nursed on the stuff, had grown strong and romantic on fruity bouquets, had tanned himself through long, youthful summers on the dry, shade-less ground of his grandparents' vineyard. Arthur thought of his grandfather, ornery to the core in business and mild as a lamb at home, watering down his wine at dinner and sneaking Arthur sips when his mother's back was turned, when he was still a boy.

But he didn't, in the end. Instead he said, “You don't have to know much about wine to know this one. It's one of the greatest wines of the 20th century.”

“Really? Because no one else who's come through here has ever said a word about it.”

“Maybe I’m not just anyone,” Arthur said distractedly, still cradling the bottle carefully in both hands.

“Maybe you’re not,” Eames murmured. 

Arthur looked at him, his brow furrowed. 

“Well go on then, find us a corkscrew,” Eames said.

Arthur’s jaw dropped a comedic inch, allowing a rush of scandalized air to be sucked into his lungs. “Eames!” he said. “No!” 

Eames laughed at him then. A sweet and harmless sounding noise, but also, Arthur thought, one of relief. Eames dragged himself out of bed and went to his wardrobe, which he threw open theatrically. From within its rucked-up depths he produced an armful of bottles—a whole symphony of glass clanking against glass, heavy and full and rich. He knelt carefully and one by one rolled them cross the carpeted floor to Arthur. 

“Any of these more to your liking?” Eames asked, sitting back on his heels.

Arthur was a (not so secret) wine snob, so the answer to that was: yes. All of them. 

By the time they’d polished off the second bottle, they’d found their way back to bed. Eames’s coloring had come back, and Arthur’s hands kept finding new places to settle on him: his biceps, the juncture where his neck met his shoulders, the suggestive swell at his lower back, his hips. Together their lips were stained berry-red with drink and activity, bruising kisses, the catch of teeth before the soothing swipe of a tongue. It grew hot around them, the room stuffy and smelling of musk and spicy, oak-rich bouquets. 

Arthur felt out of his head with bliss, tipping over the sharp edge of— _yes, yes, right there, please._ Eames was heavy on top of him and he couldn’t _think._

He didn’t want to.

For once in his goddamn life he didn’t want to.

So he stopped. He stopped thinking and opened his mouth on a gasp and said, “Oh god, I love you.” 

They both stilled. Arthur didn’t want to open his eyes and have it be real. His pulse was loud in his ears, the words coming back to him like a distrustful echo, distorted and just out of reach. And he knew: there was no getting it back.

“Shit.” Arthur scrambled off of the bed with the sobriety of an adrenaline spike. 

“Wait, Darling—“ Eames reached for him, stunned-looking and out of breath, but Arthur kept away. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” Arthur said earnestly. He began to gather his things from the floor—shoes, check; coat, check; hat and gloves, check check. His shirt, _god._ Check.

“Arthur. Please, just come back to bed.” Eames tried to stand but swayed as soon as he did and had to grip onto his headboard for support.

“It’s late. It’s late, isn’t it? Probably. I don’t even know—I should get back,” Arthur replied blandly around a tight-lipped grimace. “Feel, uh, better.”

With everything piled up in his arms, Arthur strode out of the room, and Eames didn't follow him.

Arthur seethed, his insides roiling with a sick mixture of panic and hurt. Exposure. Fragile. _Why the hell did he have to ruin everything by going and saying a dumb thing like that?_

Arthur waited until he was in the corridor before he struggled back into his shoes and shirt, flung his coat on, his hat and gloves shoved into the pockets. He caught a glimpse of himself in a darkened window as he rushed past: hair rucked up, face flushed with embarrassment. He was barely watching where he going as he fled down the three flights of stairs and out into the brisk, bleak evening. Arthur paid little mind to the odd student dragging themselves back to bed after a bender, half-dead (and more than drunk) on their feet. And he certainly didn't notice Dom escorting Mal back to her room, or the wide-eyed look they exchanged when they saw him go by.

Arthur wasn’t able to sleep. Twelve, then one, then two—he watched the red numbers flash mockingly on his cheap bedside alarm clock as he tossed onto one side and then the other, curled up on himself, shivering slightly against the indiscriminate November chill that permeated everything these days. 

He didn’t know what he was going to do about Eames. He had a fair idea of what he _should_ do, what rationality would dictate he do (slink away, play it off) but at the same time— _god_ , he _liked_ Eames. Maybe he did even love him. Incredibly. Unfairly. Stupidly. He liked Eames and he liked who he was when he was with him. Eames was porous, he leeched air and light, and if Arthur pressed close, he could share that, breathe the air and the light into his own lungs, until the world no longer felt quite so heavy, the sky less dark. When Eames touched him with his thick, inelegant fingers, Arthur felt soft, human, like there was a part of him that was fit for more than just the laboratory or a battle field. Arthur had spent years pouring cement into the fragile parts of himself, but now he wanted. He _wanted—_

But Eames hadn’t followed him. 

So. 

The gears  in his head would grind away the rest of the night, ill-greased and over-used, and he knew there was nothing for it. He wouldn’t sleep. In light of this, he threw back his duvet and took up at his desk—its white, fluorescent light bit back the last, hopeful dredges of melatonin. He’d go to work on the reading for his practical the next day, that’s what he’d do. He’d put the night behind him and just—work. His constant respite. 

Except then there were rocks again, delicate pings against the glass, and Arthur’s heart sounded off, and he didn’t want to look out and see the figure standing in the garden, not yet. Because maybe he was wrong. 

He went downstairs. He went outside. He held his breathe. 

“This is stupid,” Eames announced, and Arthur let it go. 

“Why are you here?” Arthur asked. He watched Eames carefully, wary of what it seemed he was steeling himself to say. 

“I don’t know,” he said, sounding lost. Sounding honest. Like he’d only just realized how ridiculous it was for him to be there. 

“Okay…” Arthur swallowed around his sinking heart, but stood up straight, shoulders squared, like he knew well how to do. 

Eames looked uncomfortable and shook his head. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come. Maybe I should’ve just… left it at that.” 

“Eames, what I said—“

“This is stupid, Arthur. It’s _bloody_ stupid ,” Eames burst out, like a schoolyard admonishment. 

“I’m _sorry.”_

_“_ No. Don’t—I mean. What you said. I can’t—“

“You don’t have to. I didn’t mean—“

“You didn’t?”

“I…” Arthur stopped, looked guiltily away. He couldn’t take it back. He was many things, but he wasn’t a liar. “I shouldn’t have said it like that. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Arthur… bloody hell. What I’m trying to say is—you _shouldn’t.”_

_“_ Shouldn’t… love you?” They both winced, hearing the word again. But maybe Arthur could be brave this time, just for a bit. 

“I’m rotten, Darling. Really a no-good-news bloke, I am—and this—this is dumb. What even is this? I’m sorry, I should’ve have come. I don’t—“ He backed away from Arthur, spooked and babbling nonsense. Arthur blinked, trying to gather the words to his chest, to _make something_ of them, but they had rushed forth so quickly, expelled from Eames’s trembling lips with such hurried force, he couldn’t get his fingers around them. Meaningless, they drifting out on a midnight sea of hollow space, too much air, dissipating quickly. “We shouldn’t.” 

“Sorry—you think you’re a _bad boy_?”  The only thing that’d stuck. The easy thing. 

“I am.” Eames answered, relieved. 

“You’re not a bad boy, Eames. You own a silk dressing gown. You probably even wear it.”

“Bad boys can wear silk dressing gowns.”

“They really can’t.”

“Arthur, I’m telling you I’m no good—“

“—You’ve got an acrylic painting of water lilies in your sitting room.”

“It’s Monet. And it’s oil.”

“What?”

“It’s an oil painting.”

“Right, you’ve got an oil painting of water lilies in your sitting room.”

“Bad boys can appreciate fine art.” 

“But bad boys do not—they don’t take you to their favorite place in the city—the place they sketch and never share—and kiss you in the rain, or bring you books they think will help you with your research or bring you coffee and almond croissants when you need them most and—Eames, the most heinous thing I’ve seen you do is put jam first on your scone. I’m not even English and I know that’s wrong. Obviously the clotted cream has to—“

“I think you have this picture of me, darling, except it’s all wrong,” Eames said sadly. 

“No, I think _you_ have this picture of yourself and it’s all wrong. And I don’t—I don’t know what you’re trying to _do_ , coming here, telling me all this crap about you being rotten. Are you trying to scare me off?” 

Eames turned back to Arthur at last. His nose was red in the cold and his lips pale, and Arthur wanted to rub warmth back into him. Eames’s hair was oily and matted down with dried sweat, but Arthur thought he was beautiful still, painfully so, and he didn’t understand at all what Eames was trying to say. 

“It’d be a far, far better thing,” Eames mumbled to himself.

“Well I—I don’t accept that,” Arthur said, stubborn as hell and weirdly desperate. Desperate to understand what had gotten into Eames. Desperate to hold onto him despite it. 

“I wish you would.” Eames looked at Arthur with more seriousness than he ever had before, and it sent a chill through Arthur, sparked the nerves at his fingertips until he felt shaky. 

“If you don’t want to be with me, Eames, just say so. Just have the balls to say that. Don’t come here and make _excuses_. If you don’t want me—“

Eames looks pained. “It’s not that. God, it’s not that.” Eames reached out, but stopped himself short of grabbing the hem of Arthur’s shirt. 

“I want you,” Arthur said. “I don’t want anyone else.” The last bit: quieter, a confession. 

“That’s what’s so stupid, Arthur, because you _should.”_ Eames sounded frustrated and miserable, looking down at the mud gathering on his boots, the tromped on blades of grass. 

_“Eames_. I don’t want anyone else,” Arthur  repeated. He paused and then ventured, “Do you?” 

“I haven’t been with anyone else in—in weeks,” he admitted. “Not because I’m trying to—to _prove_ anything, and I’m not saying it because I think I should get a bloody medal for it, because we never said—but—you should know.”

“What do you want?” 

“If I were a better man, a less selfish man—“

“Eames. I’m asking you: what do you want.” 

“Iwant you,” Eames said, too quiet. He paused, as though he was making up his mind about something, and he tried again. “I want you. I want it to be real.“ 

Eames stepped forward and cradled Arthur’s face in his cold palms for a second, and Arthur studied the darkness under his eyes, the fuzz over his lip, his ghostly pallor. Drinking him in, every shadow and line, to reassemble later, somewhere else, somewhere permanent. Eames brought his face close and delicately slotted his dry, cool lips over Arthur’s. Eames’s breath was stale, with a brothy edge, but Arthur didn’t care. He wanted Eames, too, he _wanted_ _him_ , and Eames wanted him, and Arthur didn’t want to think or care about anything else. They could figure it out. _They would figure it out._ But not right now. Right now Arthur needed to taste him, needed to feel Eames’s hands on him, heavy and possessive. Eames stumbled them backwards until Arthur was backed up against a tree, and then he gentled. He nipped at Arthur’s mouth with sweet, soft pecks. He kissed deeper, kinder, soft and thorough. 

They broke apart to breathe. Cold air rushed between them and they shared it, filling their lungs together, panting loud and glorious like a tabula rasa plea to the night to reset the clock and put them back where they fit so lovely against each other. Eames smiled, and it almost seemed sad, and Arthur peppered it with tiny kisses until it didn’t. 

“If I steal you away, would you finally believe me a bad man?” Eames whispered. He brushed his hand over Arthur’s temple, into the short hair over his ear.

“Not if I let you.”


	4. Chapter Four

Eames didn’t stay over. He was sick, still, and Arthur’s room had a particular dampness to it that would’ve made him worry. Or this is what he told himself, when Eames kissed him and pulled away to murmur, “I should go,” into the soft skin of his neck, and Arthur had let him. He felt dumb at the novelty of it all— _Eames wanted him_ —and he didn’t yet know how to say, “No. Stay.” They’d have the next morning, and the next day, and a hundred days after that if they were lucky (Arthur didn’t believe in luck), and that knowledge helped steel him as he watched Eames disappear down Addison’s Walk toward the High Street. 

They met up the following morning at the cafe nearly on the edge of the town. _Their_ cafe, Arthur wanted to think of it. The place was warm, with a fire burning in the grate, and Maggie lit up when Eames walked in. 

When she noticed Arthur trailing in behind him, she beamed, impossibly, wider. 

It was the weekend and the place was half-full with non-students; locals, professors maybe, or those with blander lives—accountants, shopkeepers. No one Arthur recognized. Some days Oxford felt infinitesimally small, every face at least vaguely familiar; it was a relief to step away and see again the world beyond. They showed themselves to a table near the fire and no one else paid them any mind, lost as they were in their newspapers and books or, even more pleasantly, in their current company. Arthur liked that the most. Three women a table away, poring over knitting patterns. An elderly man and his young granddaughter working on a crossword puzzle together, she fondly brushing away scone crumbs every time he took a bite and scattered them on their paper. A middle-aged couple near the front window talked low and sweetly to each other while their young son ran back and forth across the room, touching each opposite wall and then the other, making airplane sounds—or maybe he was a dragon? Arthur liked that there were still undisturbed corners of the world just like this.

Eames grabbed Arthur’s hand atop the table and tangled their fingers together, bringing Arthur’s attention back to his own pretty corner of the world. Eames looked better now, showered and with color in his cheeks. Before they’d come in Arthur had asked if he’d brushed his teeth yet, and Eames had teasingly asked if he wanted to check, and Arthur had pushed him up against the cold stone and kissed him, had let a bit of himself hide away in the comfort of Eames’s mouth for as long as he could hold his breath.

Arthur had pulled away, tasting mint. “Better?” Eames asked, and Arthur said, “Not sure, I should check again,” and so he had, running his tongue along the porcelain of Eames’s teeth, tracing the odd hitches left behind from an un-orthodontia’d youth. Eames slipped his hands up under Arthur’s jacket and shirt to graze his fingers over his sides until Arthur squirmed away and gasped out loud on the quiet, deserted street. A laugh that clattered against the stone walls, the pavement, ringing out. Eames reeled him back in and kissed along his jaw, down to his neck, over his Adam’s apple, and he’d held onto Arthur like he was something dear, something precious, his eyes glittering when they found his again. 

Then Arthur’s stomach had grumbled and Eames had laughed and pulled him inside. 

Eames told Maggie they didn’t need menus, that they’d both have a pot of black tea and a fry-up, and Arthur remembered Eames’s list of things they needed to remedy. A full English breakfast. Arthur ducked his head and smiled until Eames squeezed his hand again and said, “Don’t waste your dimples on the tabletop, love.” And so hewasted them on Eames instead, stupidly and in perpetuity, the rest of the morning. In exchange Eames had wasted his crooked teeth on Arthur, and his crinkling, long-lashed eyes—keen and bright. An artist’s eyes. 

Arthur asked about the drawing Eames had done of Maggie, lovingly displayed on the wall behind the counter, and Eames looked nearly shy, said he found this place on accident and the scones were too good not to keep coming back, and Maggie had been kind to him, which he said wasn’t always the case. “Oxford is full of reverse snobbery,” Eames said, pulling his too-hot tea away from his lips, blowing slowly on the surface. “People don’t talk about that, but plenty of folks don’t exactly care for—“

“Your kind?” Arthur interrupted. Amused, not really understanding. 

Eames gave a wry smile and looked away. If it wasn’t exactly disappointment that furrowed his brow for a moment, maybe it was resignation: that Arthur wouldn’t ever understand, not really. Arthur thought he should try harder, and pulled Eames’s hand into his own and leaned down to place a chaste kiss in his palm. When Arthur looked up through his lashes, Eames was beaming again, whole and delighted. 

Eames told Arthur that he sometimes he didn’t know how he felt about people—truly felt about them—until he sketched them. “Know the stray hairs falling into someone’s eyes, the smear of pink lipstick on their tooth, the scars on their hands—and you know them,” Eames said, looking over to where Maggie clearing away empty mugs and a half-eaten slice of teacake from a nearby table. Bits of hair had come loose from her ponytail and her left hand shook just enough to set a teaspoon clattering atop the plate she was holding. Seeing her through Eames’s eyes, Arthur could see she was beautiful in the way people who had lived their best, quiet lives were beautiful. 

Arthur thought of the sketch he’d found in the back of Eames’s book that first day in the clinic. Eames had drawn Arthur poring over his books, biting his pencil. What had Eames decided about him with that sketch? What had he noticed in that moment that convinced him Arthur wasn’t one more hopelessly brash American out of place in an English pub, but that he might be something more? Something more _to Eames?_

Eames unwrapped his paper napkin from around his silverware and flattened it out on the tabletop. He shifted enough to reach into his back pocket and produce an ordinary biro, then he hunched over the napkin and set to work on it. Arthur tried to see around Eames’s hand, which was keeping the corners flat, but he couldn’t make anything of the quick black lines. Eames stopped after a minute, considered his drawing, and turned it around and slid it toward Arthur. 

It was him.Arthur’s face, rendered in quick, rough lines of blue biro ink, his hair tumbling over his forehead in loose curls and his eyes somehow both tired and flush with life. His dimples deep, beloved. 

Eames hadn’t needed to glance up at Arthur once to do it—he’d sketched him from memory, as though he’d long since memorized the cut of Arthur’s jaw, the flat point of his chin, the jewel-like smallness of his eyes.

“The first time I ever sketched you,” Eames began, “You were in the library later than anyone else—“

“—Except for you.”

“—Yes, but you weren’t there drying out. You were there…” Eames paused, searching for the word.

“Studying?”

“No. Well, yes, but no. You had more books that surely even you needed, all stacked up neat as can be, and sometimes you’d look up at them, so honestly sad that you hadn’t gotten to them, like they might be offended by your neglect. And you never once looked up for a clock or at your watch, like you were waiting for the night to end, for an excuse to pack-up and turn in. You didn’t look like you wanted to be anywhere else. That’s important. So many people here, Arthur—despite what you might think about them being the brightest kids of their age, etc.—are just treading water. They’re biding their time, waiting for what comes after. They think, once I graduate, that will be really living. And of course once they’ve done it they’ll find some menial—temporary, they’ll swear!—job and start thinking when they have a _career_ , that will be living; or when they get married and have a family and a house, _that_ will _really_ be living. All the while they’re missing out on years and years of their lives, just _waiting_. But you, Arthur Darling—you run for the sake of running, not to get anywhere but to feel the ache of it in your muscles, the strain and soreness of a well and thoroughly lived life. You read about pharmacology and psychoneuroimmunology with the same fever as some people read Shakespeare or OK!—like it’s vital. And not to an exam or a paper, but to life—like it’s the very marrow propping you up. I saw you in the library and you were tired but you were living, just sitting there at your desk living, and that’s the rarest thing people do, Arthur.  I just… I looked at you and I wanted to know why. How. Where that’d come from. I wanted to know _you.”_

Arthur ducked his head as his cheeks burned pink. He’d never been _seen_ in quite such exacting detail before; maybe no one had ever thought he was worth the effort. Arthur’s chest felt tight again at the realization that _Eames thought he was worth the effort_. Eames wanted to watch him and sketch him and _know him_ , even if Arthur didn’t understand why. He thought that tightness might be his ribs constricting around his heart like a cage, a shield, like his very bones were frightened that Eames’s might be able to shatter that fluttering muscle with such attention. 

“Also I noticed you had the most delightful arse,” Eames added. “Scratch the rest of it—that’s what really did me in.” 

Arthur laughed, a sharp and sudden thing, and Eames grinned stupidly at him, his tongue catch between his teeth, until Maggie brought them their breakfasts, plates thick and sloppy with breakfast meats and beans and fried vegetables and thin charred pieces of toast with an egg thrown in for good measure. 

Maggie ruffled Eames’s hair before she returned to the counter, winking at Arthur as she did so. 

Eames tore up his toast and dragged a piece through his egg yolk. He stuck a mushroom with his fork and slathered the back with the saucy baked beans. He ate a sausage with his fingers, in between loud sips of milky tea (no sugar). There was a rhythm to it, graceless but mesmerizing, and Arthur held his knife and fork dumbly, struggling to begin. Eames laughed, told him to stop overthinking it and dig in. 

So Arthur did, and the rest of the world dropped away. 

Later it began to rain, rare sheets of dingy water saturating the city, running in the street. They watched it come down together, washing the windows dirty. It made the cafe feel cozy and protected, and Arthur tangled his feet with Eames’s under the table as he stuffed a final bite of egg in his mouth. 

When a man stepped into the cafe, drenched and shuddering, with a small dog wrapped in his coat, Arthur watched Eames stumble up out of his chair with the eagerness of a child, and Arthur’s heart swelled painfully, in the best way. 

“May I?” Eames asked the man, holding out his arms.

“He’s a bit of a mess, mate,” the man said apologetically.

“Mags, a towel?” 

Maggie tossed Eames a dry dish towel from behind the counter and the man passed the dog to Eames, who swathed the squirming thing with a practiced hand. The man collapsed in a chair and asked desperately for a tea, and Eames brought the dog back over to the fire near his and Arthur’s table. He kneeled down on the rug in front of the hearth and began drying the pup properly. Arthur joined him on the floor, feeling even more stupidly besotted with Eames for his boyish glee and gentle touch. The dog was mangy-looking but snuggled into Eames with such sweet, puppy-like abandon, Arthur couldn’t help but share in Eames’s adoration. He fetched some stale shortbread biscuits from Maggie and sat flush beside Eames, feeding the pup small crumbs from his fingers. Eames watched him and his eyes were alight with the flickering reflection of the fire and something else.

They started back only when the rain let up, when the streets were muggy with weak sunshine. It happened automatically now, that their hands found each other, tangled without shame, without choreography. They fell easily into step, and Arthur only watched Eames from the corner of his eye, with a stupid smile on his face, half the time. Probably. 

But then Eames’s phone rang and he didn’t hesitate in dropping Arthur’s hand to answer it. He stepped away, just an inch or so, but Arthur felt it, and tried not to listen to closely to the conversation out of respect. Arthur knew so little about Eames’s life, actually—anything about his family, his friends—he couldn’t even guess who was on the other end. His face gave nothing away—a characteristic Arthur had always found alarming in other people. 

Eames heaved a dramatic, showy sigh when he hung up and turned back to Arthur. 

“So. I’ve got a portfolio due in a few days, and I’m just realizing how horrendously behind I am on it,” he said. He fiddled with his phone, still in his hand, and looked away down the road. “I’ll probably have to lock myself in my studio at this point, to get it done.” 

Arthur had had fantasies of them spending the whole weekend together, lazy in bed and in love, finally— _finally—_ putting their young bodies to good use. When they kissed now, Arthur felt the vague inadequacy of the gesture. He loved it, the kissing—he could be happy for years with just Eames’s lips painting Mona Lisas into his skin—but he wanted more of Eames, too. He wanted all of Eames. So many other people had _had_ Eames, but Arthur wanted to _know_ Eames. Know him better than anyone else. And he wanted to be known by Eames, like no one else had known him.

But apparently Eames had work to do. 

“I can bring over some food later, if you want,” Arthur offered. “The starving artist thing isn’t in anymore, I hear.”

“It’s fine,” Eames said dismissively. “I’ll call you.”

Arthur scratched at the back of his neck and gave a jerky little nod, trying not to look awfully pathetic and dejected. 

“I mean it,” he insisted, a small smile coming back to his face. Eames reeled him back and kissed him in the middle of the street, deep and slow, lingering. When they broke apart, Eames leaned his forehead against Arthur’s and whispered, when he caught his breath, “The absolute death of me.” 

The rain grew heavy again. Arthur returned to Magdalen a little miserable but determined. That was the general feeling in Oxford, anyway, as December loomed. Heaters sparked and fizzled, blowing cold air into damp rooms. Wet clothes hugged chilled bodies, never drying. There was some respite to be found in the libraries, which were climate-controlled and drafty, if not exactly warm; but with only two weeks left of term, they were over-full and suffocating in their enforced silences, and Eames never appeared late into the night to whisk Arthur away. 

Arthur went back to thinking of dreams, and tried not to roll his eyes at Freud as he forced himself to re-read the literature. Whenever Arthur finished the work for his practicals and his lectures, he always went back to Dr. Charles’s body of study, sifting through his own collection of copies for a second read-through, or stalking the databases for something new. Arthur still believed that Dr. Charles was sharper than anyone in the department gave him credit for, and Arthur fancied the professor sensed and appreciated this acknowledgement. He felt, at last, that Dr. Charles was warming to him—or that he was at least less outwardly distrustful of him, which was close enough. He slinked away into his office less, anyway, when Arthur showed up to the clinic for his shift. On two separate occasions he’d even seen fit to engage Arthur in conversation—of a sort—when they’d both found themselves in the sorry excuse for a break room, waiting for the kettle to boil. 

The first time: “That friend of yours,” Dr. Charles started. “Have you had a look at any of the data from his sessions?” 

Arthur hadn’t. He shook his head. 

“It looks a little peculiar,” he said, his mouth pursed and his eyes far away. “I haven’t been able to put my finger on why, though.” 

Arthur had a feeling he was being talked at, rather than to, and the kettle had clicked off before he could think if he should respond. Dr. Charles had filled a small teabag-less paper cup with hot water and returned to his office without another word. 

The second time: “At ease, soldier.”

Arthur had been standing before the kettle again, his hands behind him, resting against his lower back. He did that, sometimes. Old habits and whatnot. Why let his spine slouch when he knew how to keep it straight? 

Dr. Charles’s voice wasn’t flippant, like most people’s voices were, when they said it. Like it was just something to say. The professor leaned back against the counter and watched Arthur with a sudden, keen interest. There was a frank curiosity to his gaze, something that seemed to say: ah, so there _is_ something to you. Something more. Something different.

“I’m not a—“ _soldier_. Arthur dropped his hands. “I mean, not really. Not exactly.” 

The professor hummed and kept looking at him. 

“ROTC,” Arthur said with a shrug. He didn’t know how that translated over here, if Dr. Charles knew what that meant. Hell, it could mean anything, even back home: maybe you were restless and spent some of your mornings running around campus, doing push-ups, sit-ups; maybe someone gave you a few bucks for books and asked you to give them back one weekend a month; maybe Uncle Sam paid for your whole goddamn education and owned your ass for the next four years. Any of them could be true. 

“Shouldn’t you be in the army then?” Dr. Charles asked. 

Arthur winced, a small tick of his brow he tried immediately to smooth. 

Because yeah, Arthur should’ve been. But he wasn’t. 

And the reason he wasn’t, was because once upon a time, half-delirious, half-hopeful, completely out of his depth and mad with youthful optimism, he’d written a letter to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and told him this:

_The research I’m doing right now will change the world, and you should know about it._

It was insane, really, but somehow, some way, the Chairman had actually seen Arthur’s ridiculous, naive letter; somehow, some way, he’d allowed himself to consider there was anything at all to Arthur’s claims, and Arthur had been sent to Washington D.C. for an afternoon. It had seemed so impossible at the time, Arthur hadn’t fully considered what it meant to pass along such information, to plant the idea in someone’s head (and not just any someone) that such technology might exist. He was _young_ , wasn’t he? How could he know? Sitting opposite the highest-ranking military officer in the United States Armed Forces, his hands shaking around a cup of cheap, burned coffee, he ran his mouth about infiltrating someone else’s consciousness, advanced interrogation techniques, torture. “The mind is what feels pain, sir.”  It’d all come tumbling out of his mouth, thoughtlessly. 

Because his professors at MIT indulged him; they reviewed his thesis with neutered, respectful interest. But not one of them believed there was any real substance to what Arthur was proposing. No one took him _seriously._

And Arthur was so _fucking_ young. And he was _scared_. And he wanted to be taken seriously, goddammit. He was staring down a four-year sentence in the US Army and he didn’t want his mark on the world to be just that: nameless, a gun in a desert, his brains scrambled to hell if he was lucky enough to come back. He wanted to _matter_.

So he’d poured himself glass of cheap whiskey, and he’d written a letter. 

What Arthur hadn’t had the time to tell the Chief (the man could spare just 15 minutes, which was more than he would spare for a hundred other people vying daily for his attention) was that dreams were _complicated._ They weren’t so obvious as we sometimes pretended. You couldn’t go into someone’s head and pick through their secrets, like a vault. You might be able to uncover very specific things, things they’d done or thought, that might manifest in a dream as the mind processed it for storage, but likewise dreams could be manipulated, influenced. You could plant an idea as easily as you could find one. Theoretically. Show someone a video of a known terrorist and put them to sleep, and they might dream of that man, that stranger, as though they knew them personally. Would the government be able to control themselves from abusing some dismissible “evidence”? Arthur didn’t _know_. Everything was theoretical at this point. He’d barely had time to comprehend the far-reaching implications himself, before he’d opened his mouth to the U.S. Government, and they didn’t really have time for his moral ambiguity. 

They just wanted to know if it was possible, and if so, _how._

So he’d been granted special dispensation to go to Oxford, on the off chance his crack theory might have legs. He wasn’t contracted. They hadn’t asked for any kind of promise. But maybe they knew they already had his loyalty (hadn’t he come to them in the first place?), and that was enough. And Arthur? Arthur just wanted out, wanted a chance, before he gave them up his life. 

He didn’t mean to make trouble. 

“We have a man who’s been coming to the clinic for a year now. Or—God, maybe it’s even been two. I don’t know if you’ve seen him. He’s usually here first thing in the morning, a few times a week. Such a waste.” The professor trailed off, finally looking away from Arthur. 

“What is?” Arthur prompted. 

Dr. Charles blinked. “PTSD,” he said. He shook his head: what a shame. “Young guy. Promising—you know the sort, I’m sure. Did a few tours in Afghanistan and lost an awful lot of himself. Doesn’t sleep well at all. He comes in and we help him get a few hours of dreamless rest. It’s not nearly enough of course. I wish—“ He stopped himself.

Arthur thought of the paper Dr. Charles had written a decade ago about extraction—the theoretical procedure that had first piqued Arthur’s own interest and started him down the path to this place, this very moment. Infiltrating someone’s subconsciousness during sleep, extracting information—potentially destroying it altogether. Dr. Charles had speculated such a process might be used to treat PTSD by removing any memory of the inciting incident. He’d made it sound so noble. 

And Arthur had—

Arthur was going to ruin it. 

“Extraction,” Arthur said. He couldn’t stop himself now. He needed to open the floodgates, to try and see just how far Dr. Charles had gotten with it. 

The professor didn’t startle exactly, but he narrowed his eyes in a show of consternation. He’d know now that Arthur had done his reading. He knew it was no accident that Arthur was here at all, in Oxford, in his clinic. 

“And what do you think the implications of that would be, Mr. Darling, if such a thing were possible?” 

“Frightening,” Arthur said, without hesitation.

Dr. Charles seemed surprised. “But think of the good it could do for someone like that veteran.”

“It could do good. Theoretically. Theoretically, in the wrong hands, it could also be used to do terrible things.” 

“And which have you spent more time thinking about, Mr. Darling?”

Arthur was quiet. The kettle clicked off and neither of them moved. 

“Best to keep it in good hands, then. Why do you think I play the fool?” Dr. Charles said at last. “No one listens to the fool.” 

No one except Arthur. 

Arthur was sat on a bench, absorbing the brief, weak afternoon light with the rest of the pale and dour masses, lunch in one hand, an article on how the short-term inhibition of 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 reversibly improved spatial memory but persistently impaired contextual fear memory in aged mice in the other, when Mal showed up. She announced herself by stealing the journal from his loose, unprepared grip. She closed it, not bothering to mark Arthur’s place, and stuffed it into her own bag. 

Arthur hadn’t seen Mal in days, which was unusual for them and mostly his fault—he’d been the one to turn down Dom’s last two invites out—with Dom, impending deadlines were always an acceptable excuse, and Arthur had abused that knowledge.

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” she said. She stood with her hands on her hips, staring down at him. Maybe his excuse didn’t work as well with Mal. 

“Sorry. I’ve been—“

“Don’t say ‘busy’. How boring.” Mal looked agitated, verging on upset, and glanced away from Arthur, fidgeting with the strap of her bag. She bit her lip, like she wanted to say more. 

When Arthur didn’t say anything, Mal sighed, schooled her face and glanced back at him. After a beat she extended a hand for Arthur to grab, pulling him to his feet. 

“Make it up to me, then. Have lunch with me.” 

They found a spot in the Botanic Garden to stretch out and share the sandwich and half a bottle of wine Mal had tucked away in her bag. The conversation was slow to pick up and strangely stilted—until the wine loosened their tongues. He apologized for being distant and Mal gave him a look and nodded, and it felt—almost—as it always had, pressed up against her, her face turned toward sun like a desperate a sunflower, lovely and sturdy. 

“I have Studio now,” she said. “Walk me, plum?” Sometimes Arthur was a fruit, sometimes a vegetable, sometimes a jewel. He’d missed her endearments. “It's just down the road.”

Steps from Magdalen, Arthur probably walked past the Ruskin School dozens of times a week, mindful of the cloud of students milling about on the pavement in t-shirts, trading cigarettes, rubbing color—acrylics, pastels, charcoal—from various patches of skin, always trying to catch sight Eames among them. In Arthur’s experience, Eames rarely hung outside to mingle.

Today, of course, he had. He had a burned-down cigarette stuck in one corner of his mouth while the other twitched in a grin. His hands were buried in his front pockets as he hunched forward, talking to a few pixie-cute girls with ragged hair and smocks, and he didn’t see Arthur immediately. Arthur thought about slinking up behind him and wrapping his hands over Eames’s eyes—uncharacteristically playful, but Eames brought it out in him—but then Arthur noticed Dom walking toward him and Mal from the opposite direction. He could be coming or going, it could be just a coincidence(Dom lived only half a block back the way they’d come), but something in his face told Arthur it wasn’t. There was an ugly set to his face, a fierce determination.

Arthur slowed a few feet from the gaggle of students but Mal shoved him to keep him moving forward. Eames looked up and his face broke into a look so bright and stunning, Arthur missed a breath. He blinked, and smiled back, forgetting to be bashful in the company of so many prying eyes. 

Until Mal cleared her throat and Dom appeared at her side, solid and cool. Arthur took a step away—a step closer to Eames—startled. Eames didn’t move to his side, though, which left Arthur feeling suspended between the two fractions. Eames had lost the smile—what Arthur fancied was the genuine one, anyway. He wore a contented smirk now, his eyes glinting as he took in the united front that was Mal and Dom. Arthur felt something sink in his stomach, imaging their cause. 

“What is this, an ambush?” Arthur asked. Mal ignored him.

“Miss Larue,” Eames said, titling an imaginary hat in her direction. His eyes skated over Dom, ignoring him completely, and came to rest on Arthur. “Arthur. Darling.”

Mal took a step and wrapped her arms around one of Arthur’s in a show of possession. Eames erupted in a laugh. 

“Bit late for that, Mal.”

“We don’t know what your game is, but leave Arthur out of it,” Dom said, coming around to Arthur’s other side.

Eames scratched at the stubble on his cheeks and laughed again. “You never told me you brought your parents with you to Oxford, Arthur.” 

If it was meant to be a jab at Mal and Dom, it felt like a jab at Arthur, too, and he flinched. Neither Mal nor Dom seemed bothered, or deterred. 

“You will leave him alone now, Eames,” Mal said firmly. “You got what you wanted from him. It’s done. I know how you so like to amuse yourself with these little larks, but please, just stop it. Arthur doesn’t deserve this.”

“What doesn’t he deserve, Mal? Because I happen to think he deserves the moon.” 

Mal narrowed her eyes. “He doesn’t deserve you making him think this is anything more than it is. That it’s something— _serious_!”

Arthur felt himself go a little numb, listening to Mal so coldly and succinctly dismiss the pretty delicate thing Arthur and Eames had, the fierce little flame Arthur had been giving air to, watching it grow. He didn’t know what Mal thought Eames had gotten from him, exactly, but he understood that Mal thought him a fool. A besotted, near-sighted fool who had allowed himself to be played by Eames. _Just like the rest of them_ , her face seemed to say. Hadn’t Mal warned him that this was what Eames’s did? He made people feel special and then he broke their hearts. It was, supposedly, his universally acknowledged _Modus Operandi_.

But _no._ Arthur didn’t believe it. _Wouldn’t_ believe it. What he had with Eames was different. Eames had told him so, hadn’t he? _I don’t do this,_ he’d said. Except he would, for Arthur. 

Arthur tried to catch Eames’s eye, to roll his own and commiserate with Eames, with the gesture, over how ridiculous Mal was being. But Eames wasn’t looking at him. He’d narrowed his eyes at Mal, and his face had gone stoney. Eames seemed different then, aggressive, flippant. And Arthur was reminded briefly of the guy he met in the pub, who had looked at him like a conquest. But that wasn’t really Eames. Arthur _knew_ Eames. 

“Mal, please. Stop,” said Arthur, trying to extract himself from her grip.

“Arthur—“ Dom put a hand on his shoulder, steadying him.

“Arthur, whatever he said to you, whatever he has told you, promised you—he _lies_. That’s what he does,” said Mal, so desperate, so _sad._ She broke from glaring at Eames to look at him, her eyes almost wet. She touched his cheek. “ _Mon coeur_. That’s what he does.” 

“You don’t understand—“ Arthur began, but Eames had apparently had enough. He grabbed at Arthur’s arm and hauled him bodily away from Mal and Dom’s parental embrace.

“Where do you get off telling him—“ 

“—He’s my _friend_. I _actually_ care about him,” Mal bit back. 

Eames laughed, cruel and loud. “Just because it wasn’t anything more with you, sweetheart—“

And then Dom punched him. 

Eames went down. 

“Shit! Shit.” Arthur sank to his knees beside Eames, who was wiping a small stain of blood from the corner of his mouth. _“Dom,”_ said Arthur sharply, looking back over his shoulder in shock. 

_“_ How dare you talk about her like that,” Dom said, fuming.  

“And they say American chivalry is dead,” Eames muttered. The punch, instead of stoking the fire, knocked the wind out of Eames. He made no serious effort to get up, and seemed content to lie on the cement a while longer. Arthur got behind him and to help prop him up and Eames sagged against him. Eames’s cheek was pink and already swelling. It would bruise. Badly. 

Dom had pulled Mal close to him, who looked half-shocked herself. Her eyes were wide, staring at Eames’s collapsed form, and her fingers rested over her lips. Eventually she came back to herself and turned to Arthur. 

“We forgive you for not listening to us, for not seeing it,” Mal started, “because I know how _persuasive_ he can be. But come away from him, mon chou. Come on, come back with Dom.” She was begging now, holding out an unsteady hand to Arthur.

These were his friends. His first friends, his _family._ There was a crowd around them now, giving them space with piqued ears, and Arthur felt his face go red, embarrassed. _Betrayed._ These were his friends and yet they’d set an ambush for him, meant to shock him into retreat and, what, subservience? They had set out to publicly shame and humiliate him, name him a fool. And it _hurt_. 

“You _forgive me_ ,” Arthur said slowly. “You _forgive me_ for falling in love?” 

A look of pity came to Mal’s face. 

“Come off it, Arthur,” Dom said, disbelief or disgust warring on his face.

“Don’t be another stupid pretty thing who think what Eames makes you feel is love. It is not love,” Mal said quietly, fiercely. So very certain. It was Arthur’s last chance to cross the line in the sand, but he wouldn’t. He stayed put. 

“And what makes you an expert on love, Mal? You lead Dom around like a puppy on a leash, dragged around by a disinterested child. Devoted, besotted Dom. And _you_ ask _me_ if it’s love. You know nothing, Mal. _Nothing_.” 

Mal stepped back on a flinch, as though she’d been slapped, and Dom hesitated, dumb, on the edge of the confrontation, unsure if he, too, had been insulted. Arthur knew Dom ached to comfort Mal, but in his typical fashion, didn’t know how—and Arthur pitied them a little, even in the midst of his anger, and in his head he named it jealousy, what had propelled Mal to try and tear him and Eames apart. 

Eames found Arthur’s hand and squeezed it before levering himself up and turning around. He cupped Arthur’s jaw with one rough hand and looked at him, concerned. Serious. His eyes betrayed a million thoughts and god, what Arthur would do to know them all. He held his breath, waiting for Eames to say something, anything. He forgot about the crowd, about Dom and Mal. It was just him and Eames, a little mussed and bruised, and Arthur needed to hear that it would stay that way. That he wasn’t alone in this. 

Eames leaned forward until his warm lips brushed the shell of Arthur’s ear. “These are your friends, darling,” he whispered. “I won’t make you choose them over me.”

But Eames wasn’t making him choose. Dom and Mal were. And that alone made the choice obvious. 

“Come on. Let’s get something for your cheek.” Arthur untangled himself from Eames and awkwardly they got to their feet—both helping, and probably hindering, each other as they did so. 

Mal’s bright eyes set themselves on Eames when she said, “Alistair Howell is not someone to whom I’d entrust many secrets, if I were you.” 

Arthur thought he felt Eames stiffen beside him. He didn’t understand what Mal was talking about, but really he didn’t want to. He felt sick. He felt tired. 

Arthur fixed Mal with a steady look and said simply, “We’re done here.” 

He turned and walked away, stiff-necked, back straight, and Eames followed a step behind his heels. They didn't speak. Arthur kept pace. The silence grew. It compounded until it seemed the whole of Oxford had gone mute in deference, in respect—the sputtering hum of bus engines, the high-noon buzz of the exhausted and adrenalized masses parting around them on the pavement—falling away. Like a curtain had been dropped awkwardly—prematurely—on the stunned quiet of an unintended audience.

For his part, Arthur was too damn angry, or maybe just too disappointed, to say anything, and he half-hoped that if he kept quiet the whole scene would dissolve like some mean bit of play acting. And maybe if he kept himself from thinking about it, his brain would never process it'd happened at all, and it'd never get stored permanently in the delicate folds of his brain. Of course he knew it didn't work like that, but he wished it did.

Mostly he was scared. Scare of what Eames was thinking, even as he followed Arthur unquestioningly. Because maybe Eames was busy regretting his concession to Arthur the other night. Maybe they—this—was already seeming like more work and more drama than Eames really cared to invite into his plush, easy world. Why couldn't this be easy, too?

Arthur only stopped once they reached Magdalen, the college's fortress-like beauty washing over Arthur like a balm. He steeled himself to face Eames, if only so he might be dismissed, but Eames was close now, close enough to reach out to lace his and Arthur's fingers together. Eames squeezed his hand and met Arthur's nervous, imploring eyes resolutely.

“I might have some frozen peas in the kitchen,” Arthur offered.

“That would be lovely, if you think you could spare a few,” said Eames, a pretty flicker of a smile coming back to his swollen face.  

And Arthur thought, _maybe this can be easy._  

Arthur took them through the boat house and back through The Grove to Holywell Ford. He sat Eames down at the kitchen table, where he looked painfully out of place—Tom Ford and stained, chipped laminate, the sticky debris of graduate student life (pot noodles, McVitie’s crumbs, a nearly empty pint of milk, an apple core)—and immediately began to fidget. 

“Tea?” said Arthur, checking the cabinets along the wall behind Eames’s back, willing his own hands to stop shaking. He found an absurdly large bag of Tetley (not his own) and grabbed out two tea bags. The mugs he found were his own, he was pretty sure. He switched on the kettle, put out milk and a few packets of demerara sugar. 

“The force is strong with this one,” Eames said, accepting the mug of hot, browning water. “Tea solves all—that’s the English way.” He filled it to the brim with milk and sugar and took a pleased, relaxing sip. 

Arthur left his own mug on the table while he poked through the tiny freezer. It eventually gave up, as predicted, a bag of frozen peas. Arthur wrapped it in a tea towel and sat down next to Eames, pressing the compress gently to Eames’s swelling cheek, even as he insisted on continuing to drink his tea. 

“That was a bit mental,” Eames said. 

His expression was mostly hidden by the swaddled peas and the mug of tea, but Arthur thought at least the comment didn’t _sound_ like a death knell. He inhaled a deep, measured breath, and set the cold compress down. Eames looked at him, beautiful and flushed red, one cheek hot, the other like ice. Arthur told himself Eames didn’t look ready to run, like a spooked horse, but he had to be sure. 

“I’m sorry, for what happened back there.” 

Eames shook his head and reached for Arthur’s hand again, holding on tight. “Don’t. You can’t help it if everyone wants you for themselves.” He grinned for a brief moment, somehow sweet and salacious, but it flickered away just as quickly, and the look on his face became careful. Serious.

“Arthur…” Eames started, “Maybe your friends had a point.”

“Eames, don’t.” 

“I’m just saying—“

“And I’m saying don’t. They don’t know you. They don’t know _us,”_ Arthur said firmly, gripping Eames’s hand tighter. “I thought you were supposed to stop trying to scare me off of you.” 

“Never,” Eames said, pulling Arthur close until he tumbled into his lap with a small laugh. 

“I love you.” 

Eames growled and hid his face in Arthur’s t-shirt, his forehead pressed to Arthur’s breastbone. 

Arthur loved Eames, and it was the most ridiculous thing but wasn’t that what people said, poets and pop stars? That love was ridiculous and messy and frightening. His grandfather had warned him with Keats and Byron; his mother with Édith Piaf and Nina Simone. 

But they had also told him to be brave. So he would be. 

Even if “brave” was merely a word thrown around mostly by people who couldn’t bring themselves to say “stupid” instead. 

Arthur grabbed his face and pulled it away just enough so that Arthur could look down at him. “I love you, okay? I’m not asking you to say anything like that back. Just. Stop trying to give me these—these _outs._ Can you do that?” 

The kitchen was still. The ceiling beams creaked above their heads where a student paced in his room, back and forth, back and forth. The voices of punters far down the river coming in through the cracked window over the sink. Arthur watched Eames’s face seize up in something like pain, or consternation—all furrowed brow and pursed lips and downcast eyes. But after a minute, through which Arthur held his breath, it passed, and Eames’s face relaxed into something almost wistful. 

“Darling,” he started, smiling faintly. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you,” he said, and leaned up to capture Arthur’s mouth in a gentle, careful swoop. 

Arthur melted, withdrew his hands from Eames’s and ran them up Eames’s neck instead, and into his hair, gripping, holding on, kissing back with vigor enough to nearly topple them both out of the chair. Eames reached out and steadied him, his lips smiling against Arthur’s even as they kissed. He was sure Eames could hear the noise of his heart now, this close, but he fancied he could hear Eames’s, too—shuddering, picking up speed, beating in tandem with his own. The cacophony schoolboy love makes when it leaves home, finding room in their bodies to flourish.

Eames’s hands were on him, running up his thighs, over his hips, and Arthur wanted to buck up against the too-light touch and demand friction, demand satisfaction. But they were in still in the very much communal kitchen—a fact Arthur was only reminded of when he heard the toaster at his back _bing_ and _whoosh._ Arthur jerked away from Eames, stumbling up and out of the chair, and turned around to see Darien, a marshmallow of a Classics student, carefully preparing some beans on toast. 

“Darien!” Arthur said, almost choking on his mortification. To be caught two seconds from stretching out and having Eames right there on the kitchen table. _Oh god._

“Hmmm?” Darien turned around, oblivious. “Oh, don’t mind me.” He turned back to his toast.

Arthur buried his face in his hands. 

Eames began to crack up. “Come on, up we go,” he said, pulling Arthur to his feet.

“My room’s upstairs,” Arthur offered. 

Eames was still smiling, but he shook his head. “I have to go.” They were standing just in the doorway, still too near Darien for any kind of scene. “Don’t look at me like that, pet. I’ve got a standing appointment to meet some friends for an early meal and I”—at this Eames leaned close, pressing his lips to the shell of Arthur’s ear—“I want to take my time with you.” 

“Oh. Right. That’s… good?” Arthur swallowed hard. 

Eames smirked and ran his fingers up Arthur’s arm—barely a tickle, but a shiver followed it through Arthur’s body. “I happen to think it will be _very_ good,” Eames said. 

Arthur nodded. “That’s good.” He closed his eyes and licked his lips. “That’s very good.” When he opened them again, he was sure his pupils were blown wide, because Eames made a desperate sort of keening noise at the sight. “Run along to your friends then. I’m going to just… go back to my room, alone, and… think… about that.” 

Eames stepped up against him, his hands resting on Arthur’s hips, and buried his face in the crook between Arthur’s neck and his shoulders. He thought he felt Eames kiss him through his shirt, but he couldn’t be sure. After a moment Eames was laughing and shaking his head and murmuring something into his skin. 

“What?”

“No. No way,” Eames said, pulling away just enough to be clear. 

“No way what?”

“No way you’re going back to your room alone.” He placed a kiss low on the side of Arthur’s neck and began a trail upwards.

_Promising_ , Arthur thought. And _yes_. He was about to say as much when Eames continued:

“Right. You’re coming with me.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to—“

Eames groaned deep in his throat and laughed at the same time. “Arthur, Arthur. _To dinner._ You’re going to have to come with me to dinner otherwise I’ll be terribly distracted all night and— _god_ , I want you, pet.”

At that, Darien shuffled slowly past, shattering the moment as he retreated back to his room with his toast on a plate. “Don’t mind me,” he repeated, unperturbed. 

This time Arthur laughed.

“Fine. Dinner it is.” 

Dinner was not The Wheatsheaf or Three Goats Head. It was not a few mates sharing plates of chips over on-offer pints, finding coins in their pockets and worrying about their overdrafts. There was no hall above them, shaking the rafters with terrible music; the carpet didn’t squelch or smell of piss and beer (and worse). Students weren’t collapsing with their heads down on sticky tables, from exhaustion or drink, or the shame of a disappointing tutorial. In fact, there were very few students at all. 

Dinner, it turned out, was the brasserie at the Malmaison, a showy boutique hotel in a converted medieval prison near Oxford Castle filled mostly with businessmen during the week and the more trendy (read: international) parents for long weekends, dropping in on their still-needy dependents. Arthur recalled being toured past it during Orientation, on their way to the castle, but they’d had no reason to go inside.

Now Arthur had a reason, and he found the place predictably sleek—all stone and Euro modernism, sharp lines and bold prints in purples and grays. Waiters in pressed slacks and starched shirts, whose eyes followed him and Eames through the restaurant with an unnerving closeness. Eames’s friends were already seated at a table in back.

Their conversation ceased at Arthur and Eames’s approach and they all stared at Arthur with their sharp, critical eyes. Arthur tried to smile, and raised his hand in a meek show of greeting, and he wondered just how pathetic he looked. He’d allowed himself to forget where Eames came from, the well-tailored, polished brutes he kept for company. It seemed idiotic that he thought he might find a place here at this table, with these people—boys who were, if not handsome, carried themselves with the arrogance of money, which they knew more than made up for their long faces and sagging jowls, wide foreheads, deeply-pored noses. A few were striking, and scarier for it, pale and diabolically angelic looking.  

None of them had Eames’s beauty, his soft features and kind eyes, lips that could break your heart. 

“Guys. This is Arthur,” Eames said. Their eyes drifted to Eames, a tableau of raised eyebrows and pursed mouths. “He’ll be joining us tonight.” The stern, forced joviality of his voice was such that it brooked no argument, and Eames caught a passing waiter’s attention to ask for another chair. They settled in close together at the table’s only open space, their backs to the room. 

The boy in the gun fighter’s seat—ghostly and delicate, with too-dark eyes—leaned forward on his elbows and rested his chin on his clasped hands. Even now, even from here, Arthur could see he was a boy who would become a man who might would rule the country one day, so keen was the sharp quirk of his mouth. “Arthur,” he said in a purr that was so un-like how Eames’s said it, it made Arthur shudder. “Welcome to the party.”

The table had already ordered wine, which came and was poured around with little abandon. Arthur caught the label and winced, wondering how much he’d be expected to contribute to the final check, even as he waved away the waiter after a half-pour. The Malmaison wasn’t the Ritz, but it would do damage enough to Arthur’s budget, which allowed for little more than student drink offers and the odd £10 bottle of wine from Sainsbury’s. Eames’s brow furrowed when he noticed Arthur’s wine glass, but he didn’t say anything. He waited a beat until the others were lost in conversation, and he switched his and Arthur’s glass with a sleight of hand even Arthur thought impressive. Eames slapped his hand down on the table, gathering attention, and chugged the few sips that had constituted Arthur’s wine portioning. He set the glass back down and signaled the waiter for more. Most of the boys laughed— _Eames, you lush_ —but Arthur thought the ghost in the corner ( _Alistair_ , Arthur would learn) had noticed the switch. He was watching Arthur, an unreadable look shading his fine features. 

More wine arrived, and then starters, and then mains, and the evening carried on, raucous and merry. If Arthur was not exactly brought into the fold the drunker everyone got, he was, at least, eventually forgotten about, which seemed to lighten the mood considerably. Two boys to Arthur’s left, well on their way to gentlemanly pissed, seemed intent on ignoring his presence entirely as they slurred, “But why is he _here_?” just loud enough for him to hear. That was inclusivity for you, Arthur thought. These people ignored the things they didn’t like until they simply… went away. Or seemed to. They had learned it from their parents and they’d teach it to their own children, someday. Their world would close in around them, glistening and rich, protected by walls, and they’d never hear the voices on the other side calling to them, screaming that the world was ending. 

But tonight they were just boys, lazy in luxury and legacies, drunk on fine wine and decent food and each other’s good opinions. They talked in a language that was particular to them, Arthur thought, and really it was a small mercy he wasn’t invited to join in. Names like Bunny and Bertie and Archibald, Jonty and Lysander, Fitzroy, Hamish. Boys they’d gone to school with who’d done Cambridge instead, or St. Andrews, or who were still on their gap year in Tibet. They talked about the impending holidays and their plans for it: Aspen, Courchevel, St Moritz; the drudgery of family obligations (“Dad’s new wife insists we do Christmas in at the house in Gloucestershire.” “Probably the Cotswolds make her forget she’s just married into Burke’s.”); the impending relief of better company (“If I have to listen to one more state school foghorn tea-wop tell me how earnestly they believe England is being _eroded_ by the perpetuation of the _class system_ , I’ll scream.”). 

Eames remained quiet throughout the jaunty exchanges, picking at his food and sweating relentlessly against Arthur’s hand under the table, where theirs were clasped. Arthur wasn’t sure if this was out of character or not; Eames had always seemed to him a charmer, a storyteller, like he’d be the beating heart of any party; but Arthur hadn’t seen Eames in this context, not exactly. Arthur tried to convince himself he wasn’t the source of Eames’s discomfort, but he had a sinking feeling he was. 

It wasn’t until pudding had been served and devoured, and wallets extracted, notes thrown on the table (Eames stopped Arthur’s hand when he went to pull out his own, which contained a single £20 note—barely enough to cover his main; “You’re my guest,” Eames said under his breath, not unkindly), that Alistair acknowledged Arthur again. 

“There’s a dinner at the end of term, Arthur. Something a little more… formal—an annual sort of things we boys do. Has Eames mentioned?” 

Arthur hesitated, then shook his head. 

“I thought not.” Alistair narrowed his eyes at Eames as a disappointed parent might their child. 

“You have something to wear? You have a tux with you here at Oxford, I assume? Or maybe I shouldn’t assume… Eames can help you with something either way, I’m sure.”

“Alistair, I don’t think—“ Eames began.

“—If you’ll bring him _here_ , _surely_ there’s no reason you wouldn’t want to bring him next week,” Alistair said, his voice cutting. “Unless there’s some reason we should know about. Eames?” 

Eames bowed his head, just an inch. _No._ He dropped Arthur’s hand under the table and ran both of his own through his hair.

_“_ I thought not.” Alistair stood, and the others with him, frighteningly synchronized.  “Well, Arthur, it’s been… illuminating. I think next week is going to be an awful lot of fun.”

The group began to gather their things and shuffle, loose with wine, toward the doors, save Eames and Arthur, who stood slower, took their time. Alistair was the last to work his way around the table and he grasped Eames’s shoulder as he passed, holding on until his knuckles went white. Eames didn’t shake him off, or look away from startlingly intimate blinking contest the two had suddenly embarked on. Arthur held his breath, though he didn’t know why. 

“Careful with that,” Alistair said, releasing Eames after a long moment. 

It was plenty late and the brasserie rang quietly in the group’s wake. Arthur followed Eames out, once the others had gone. He was unsure whether he should take up Eames’s hand again as they started back in the dark, a little stunned by Eames’s silence and the dispirited hunch of his shoulders.

“Your friends are… nice,” Arthur said carefully.

“My friends are terrible.” 

“No. No. They’re—“

“Terrible, Darling. They are. It’s okay, you can say it.”

“They’re just… rich, I think.” 

Eames laughed, sharp and ugly. “That’s one word for it. A good enough word for it, I guess. Rich and all that comes along with it. Still want to play in my world?” 

_“Eames_.”

“I know. _I know_. No trying to run you off. I promised. I just thought if you met them, you’d realize how dreadful all of this is and maybe you’d get some sense in you.” 

Arthur ran through the night again in his head: dull, exclusionary conversation and disregard for small fortunes (by student standards) aside, there had been nothing particularly alarming about dinner. Arthur risked it and reached for Eames’s hand. 

“If I asked you not to come, next week, would you listen?”

“Are you ashamed of me?” 

“Arthur. _Darling_.” Something thawed, melted in Eames’s voice. He stopped and turned to Arthur, an earnest look in his eye. “ _Darling._ It’s not that. No.”

“It’s just—I know I don’t exactly fit in with your crowd, like, _at all_. But. I don’t really have a crowd of my own now”—Eames winced—“and maybe if they just got to know me, got used to my, uh, plebeian ways, we could get along? Eventually?” It sounded naive and sad, even to his own ears, but half of it anyway was true: Eames was all Arthur had anymore. He’d thrown over his two closest friends for him, and presumably the crowd that came with them. 

Eames watched him with his sad and gentle eyes. He cupped Arthur’s jaw with one cold hand and brought him close for a kiss, sweet and timid, and Arthur lost himself there until things didn’t feel scary or bad anymore. 

That next week was perfect, and it got away from them too quickly, disappearing into so much thin air like mirages always do.

Lectures and seminars ceased, as did their rendezvous at the clinic. Term paper due dates loomed. There would be exams and portfolio critiques, a dozen other anxiety-provoking moments. Eames worked, Arthur studied, and sometimes they did so together in long, silent, content bouts, late into the night.  Some days they set up in Arthur's favored corner of the Science Library, Eames dragging along his Art History books without complaint, and they passed scraps of paper between them to avoid the aggrieved stares of their fellow students.

“Did you know Dali was inspired by melting chunks of Camembert?” Eames would write and Arthur would write “If you’re snoring, it means you’re not dreaming,” and when enough students had retired to the pubs in the evening, either would write “Meet you in the stacks.” They'd mark their places with torn up bookmarks and stagger their retreats, and for a few good minutes they'd knock the Dewey decimal system into disarray with their pawing, wandering hands.  

And if Arthur had once worried that Eames was keeping them tucked away like something precious (or something shameful), he no longer did. Oxford opened up to them, and when they weren't studying, they wandered the streets like the young and in love were meant to, flush against each other, hands clasped. When they had no where in particular to be, they walked slowly, Arthur resting his head against Eames's broad shoulder so Eames could twist his head just so and bury his nose in Arthur's hair, kiss the side of his head above his ear. They took a front table at the Vaults and Garden cafe, the beating heart refuge of the Radcliffe Camera masses, and they shared a piece of sweet, crumbling cake with their coffees (sometimes even Eames needed something stronger than tea). Eames kissed away the froth from Arthur's upper lip and when their cups were empty and there was still daylight left in the street, asked what poem Arthur knew best by heart. Arthur began, “Who made the world?” and Eames traced a finger back and forth across Arthur's open palm, his crooked teeth catching the dying light in a shy smile. “What'd you draw?” Arthur asked when he was done, but Eames just shook his head and kissed the canvas, and they retired the day.

When the afternoons were fair and cool, they broke from their books and their easels and stole a few hours in the Christ Church meadow, where the world seemed very far away indeed and they could stretch out on the damp grass in the shadow of a slumbering, leafless tree, smelling earth, smelling their own musky humanness; a primal, base pleasure. Arthur laid his head in Eames's lap, let him comb his fingers through Arthur's growing hair and over the planes of his face where he'd let himself get end-of-term scruffy. Eames told him he missed his dimples. Arthur closed his eyes and let the weak sun color his face, and Eames recited back, “I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass.”

Other days the sky stayed grey and Arthur came to Eames's room, built a fire in the grate and made himself a sort of nest on the cold leather couch where he could revise while Eames made frustrated grunts in the next room. Arthur made a point of delivering him mugs of tea at regular intervals, aromatic loose-leaf blends from glossy tins Eames kept on a shelf with his electric kettle, with a few digestives on the side, or sometimes an orange. When Arthur couldn't think for the quiet, he put a record on in the corner—The Beatles or Louis Armstrong—which drew Eames out to pace the sitting room, his paintbrush clamped between his teeth, his shirt covered in drying goldenrod splotches. On one occasion Eames paused by the record player, seemingly lost in thought, looking out the window onto the quad. He began to lazily sway in time to the music and Arthur couldn't help himself: he came up behind him and rested his hands on Eames's hips, his chin on Eames's shoulder, and like that they danced, just for a few minutes, and Arthur could see Eames smiling in the reflection off the glass. 

At night, when they were both exhausted and their eyes dry and drooping, Eames dug out a bottle of wine and joined Arthur in his nest, wedging his cold feet under Arthur's folded legs. They were quiet to start, coming down, their minds un-spooling, and then they weren't. Then they talked. Eames, with his keen artist eyes, watched Arthur enjoy his wine and told him he belonged in Tuscany, that the dusty gold vineyards would compliment his dark hair, tan his pale skin. “I can see you there, middle aged, restoring some old, crumbling villa,” Eames predicted, and Arthur couldn't admit how much he wanted that, because he suspected his future would brook little room for such things.   

“Napa,” Arthur admitted. “Sonoma, actually. Born and bred.” A peek, at last, behind the curtain. He finished his wine. 

“Of course you bloody were. Your parents probably fed you wine grapes instead of lemons, just to see your face screw up.”

The bottle was gone and their glasses empty, and they fell asleep just like that, sprawled together on the couch, half-entwined.  

They submitted their work. Dr. Charles accepted Arthur’s project proposal. 

Friday’s dinner approached. 

Arthur tried not to feel like their time was running down, somehow, because surely they'd just started. It was early days. But Arthur couldn't help feeling—when Eames went quiet, staring off at something Arthur couldn’t see—like they were rushing toward some kind of finish line. And Arthur wanted to dig his heels in and say no, slow down, but Eames was pulling him along, and Arthur followed because he didn't know what else do to. He couldn’t let go. Because he wanted Eames, wanted this man who smelled like expensive soap and touched Arthur like he was something precious, too; who was strong but asked Arthur to pry open jars from Fortnum & Mason—Piccadilly Pear Drops and Flying Saucers and Potted Shrimps. A man whose friends were preparing themselves to rule the country while he hid in his room and painted—cathedrals Arthur didn't recognize and women Arthur was scared to ask about. 

On Thursday they fell into bed, free of their obligations at last, their bodies tired and weirdly sore. “I plan to sleep for the next hundred years. Don’t mind me,” Eames murmured, closing his eyes. But Arthur had other plans. He summoned his last vestiges of energy and straddled Eames smoothly, smiling down at him with some mixture of joy and delirium. Eames blinked up at him owlishly, startled—though not unpleasantly so, Arthur had cause to hope. Already he could feel Eames beneath him, taking an interest. Arthur leaned down and Eames met him for a sloppy kiss, their necks craning. _Yes_ , Arthur thought, and _finally._ He wanted Eames. _God_ , he wanted Eames, had wanted him for ages now. It’d been more than a month and the furthest they’d gone was Arthur nearly ruining himself in his pants. An embarrassing marker of “intimacy.” But now there was nothing stopping them—no fevers, no assignments, no half-hearted ideals about abstinence.

Arthur rocked his hips forward, back, their groins lined up just so, and Eames choked back a moan, steading Arthur with his hands at his waist. Again Arthur moved, slow and deliberate, as he moved his hands under Eames shirt to scratch trails up his stomach, his chest. 

“I want to hear you,” Arthur said. “Please, Eames. _I need to hear you._ ” 

Eames’s eyes fluttered shut and color came into his cheeks—tantalizing splotches of rosiness. “Oh god,” Eames whispered, biting his lower lip. He bucked up to meet Arthur’s rhythm, almost involuntary. 

Arthur balanced himself with one hand on Eames chest while his other crept down to undo the button of Eames’s trousers. He skimmed the bulge there, hot and hard against his palm, before snaking a hand inside the fly. He grasped the length of Eames through his _silk boxers,_ because really Eames was ridiculous sometimes, and Arthur huffed a laugh to himself. 

Eames eyes shot open at the noise and he looked pained for a brief second, breathing hard. “Wait, wait.” He reached down and extracted Arthur’s hand from inside his pants. 

“Did I do something wrong?” Arthur asked, confused and suddenly shy. He eased off of Eames and came to kneel at the end of the bed, putting what distance he could between him and Eames, who was propping himself up on his elbows now. 

“No, pet. God, no. It’s not—Tomorrow, yeah? We can do this tomorrow. I’m knackered, truly, and just. We can do it properly then.” 

Arthur couldn’t meet Eames’s eyes, keeping them downturned to his own shaking hands fidgeting in his lap. He felt he’d been doused with cold water, and all of his doubts crept back in. Maybe they were just excuses after all, all of those things—sicknesses and portfolios. Maybe Eames just didn’t want to sleep with him. Maybe this whole thing had been some elaborate game to which Arthur didn’t understand the rules, and he hated Eames a little bit, just then, for letting him go on. 

But just as Arthur was steeling himself to go, Eames scrambled forward and grabbed his uncooperative hands. He prodded Arthur’s chin up with a hooked finger. “Darling,” he said softly, running his thumb over the smooth skin where Arthur’s dimples had retreated (he’d finally shaved, half in anticipation, half out of sheer irritation). “ _Darling_. Please don’t look at me like that. I’m sorry. I really—Arthur, I want to be with you. Maybe you believe that and maybe you don’t, right now, but _I want you, darling_. It’s just—I want to make sure you still want me.”

“Of course I want you, Eames.”

“Tomorrow then,” he repeated. 

“What’s going on, Eames?”

Eames shook his head. “Tonight can we just lie here for a while? I just want to lie here, with you, tonight. Can we do that?”

Arthur met his imploring gaze and felt everything else drop away. There was love there, even if Eames hadn’t said it. Arthur could see it. How unflinchingly earnest Eames was with Arthur, how carefully he touched him, how softly he spoke. Yes, there was love. Arthur’s lips twitched and he nodded.

“Do your pants up, then,” Arthur said. He crawled up the bed and collapsed beside Eames, who fumbled to close up his fly. Really there wasn’t space for both of them on Eames’s narrow student bed, but Eames wrapped an arm around Arthur’s shoulders and pulled him flush against him, and it worked. They slept. 

The next evening Eames withdrew a slim tux from the back of his wardrobe and held it out to Arthur. Arthur tried not to wonder why it fit him so perfectly. Eames did his bow tie for him and helped him into his dinner jacket and Arthur felt, inexplicably, like a lamb before the slaughter.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry.

Arthur grew up in a small house on a large vineyard in the rolling hills of Sonoma County. He had his own bedroom with shelves and shelves of books and a box of tinkering toys, building blocks, and a window that looked out over the aisles of strong and twisting vines, fat in the late summer, bare in the spring. His mother had the room down the hall with a deep wardrobe in which Arthur loved to hide and imagine himself escaping into wintery other worlds. His grandparents shared the biggest room at the end of the hall, and they always woke long before the sun. Arthur would wake up to the smell of brewed coffee and tobacco and he’d stumble downstairs to the kitchen, and there they’d be, always, without fail. His grandfather at the long, worn table, the paper in one hand, a mug in the other. His grandmother at the stove, making him wonky-shaped pancakes, like letters that spelled out his name—kind of. There would be bacon. His mother would shuffle in soon after, still tying her robe, and she’d go to the fruit bowl to cut up peaches for their yogurt in the summer or apples for their oatmeal in autumn. The radio would be on to some local talk station that played ancient songs during the break, and Arthur would launch himself across the kitchen floor singing along to Otis Redding or Johnny Cash, slipping across the linoleum in his socked feet. His grandparents would applaud and his mother would kiss the top of his head, and then they’d force him into a chair to eat. 

The house was small, but it was full and warm and steeped in love. 

Milo and Cassie would come in just as Arthur was rushing out to catch the bus to school, grimy, bright-eyed twenty-somethings that came up from Occidental every morning from July to October to help with the harvest, and a few times a week otherwise, to trim and prune and whisper sweet nothings to the grapes. Mend fences, do any miscellany that needed doing. When there was no school, Arthur wore himself out running wild in the vineyard, chasing aliens, catching bank robbers, his fingers the deadliest, surest guns in the whole Wild West, and Milo and Cassie would catch him up in their arms sometimes and he’d be defeated that day, or he’d sneak up behind them and wrap their wrists with dead vines and put them in jail so he could run home for a slice of his mother’s rhubarb pie, kicking up dirt, getting tan, reciting Emerson and Keats as he went, leaving the sweet notes of their laughter in his wake. 

And there was Paul, their winemaker, who was grey at the temples and who whiled away his days in the small on-site winery, handling the ferment, minding the press and the tanks and the walls of oak barrels where the wine aged and where Arthur, on particularly gloomy days, sometimes hid, reading ahead in his science textbook. Paul was quiet, and moved like a man older than he was. If he sometimes appeared spooked or startled by Arthur’s childlike energy, his borderline rowdiness, Paul never shooed him from the winery, never scolded him or warned him away from the shelves of delicate bottles. He spoke to Arthur gently, but not in the vaguely condescending way adults do to children. Paul spoke to Arthur like he was an adult, like he’d done something to earn that kind of respect. When Paul lead tours through the winery, the women in back would titter about how handsome he was—they’d blush rose if he ever addressed them directly, asking if they preferred red to white, sparkling or non—and Arthur would rush back to the house, inexplicably embarrassed. He’d latch onto his mother, who was preparing a cheese board for the guests, peppering it with crackers, bits of fruit, nuts. She knew just what went with what, and tried to teach Arthur as he grabbed at apple slices and brie (he liked to scoop out the gooey middle and save the outside for the chickens they kept in a coop behind the house), but he was young and distractible. Anyway, he’d have his whole life to learn.

Sometimes there were weddings on the property, and Arthur liked how it looked, with the grapes all strung through with fairy lights. He liked how people laughed at weddings, and how they swayed on the makeshift dance floor to “How You Look Tonight” and “At Last,” songs Arthur knew because he’d performed them in the kitchen many, many times. Usually the guests didn’t notice him peeking around the corner of the shed watching, or they just didn’t mind. Sometimes he’d be waved onto the dance floor to flounce around with a pretty, unattached flower girl. And if it wasn’t a wedding, it was a harvest party, or a birthday for a family down the road, and he’d dance on his mother’s shoes. The vineyard thrummed with such life, and joy, and Arthur was spoiled on happiness and love and didn’t even know it, because he’d never known a life that was different. 

But such things don’t last forever, Arthur would learn. They can’t. 

Arthur was 13 when his grandfather fell down the stairs. A stroke, they said, and he was dead three days later, pulled off life support. His grandmother followed that autumn, dying (peacefully, they said, like that should be a comfort to him) in her sleep after one last raucous Thanksgiving meal—half a dozen nearby families had come together to cook and eat and enjoy the last dredges of the season. The house grew quiet. In the mornings Arthur pressed his nose to the peeling wallpaper in the kitchen, just to catch a stale whiff of his grandfather’s cigarettes. 

His mother laughed less, and always looked tired. Sometimes Arthur caught her behind the chicken coop crying into her sweater, and the first few times he didn’t know what to do and fled back to his room, but finally he was brave enough to walk up and hug her, and he liked to think that helped. She cried less, or found some new hiding place where Arthur couldn’t find her. 

Arthur got older. His mother made sure he did his homework first, but it was never very hard and he spent more of his afternoons helping around the vineyard. Sometimes he drove with Paul when he took orders into Occidental or even down to San Francisco, and the city seemed very loud and dirty to him. But the vineyard, at least, was still alive, and there were still people in the world who drank the wine they made over a good meal and were happy. 

When Arthur was 15, Paul got married and moved to San Francisco with his new wife, permanently. Everyone was sad—his mother, he thought, especially. Milo and Cassie came by less and less. There were new faces in the winery and in the vineyard and at the dinner table, but years later Arthur wouldn’t remember any of their names. They came and went, doing their job and nothing more. Arthur spent more time alone in his room with his books, guiltily dreaming of CalTech and Stanford and MIT—because how could he leave his mother to handle the vineyard on her own? How could he leave her, full stop? Everyone was always leaving her: the man they never talked about, who disappeared before Arthur had even plumped up her belly; her parents; Paul. Arthur couldn’t do that to her, too.

But three weeks after his 17th birthday, she left him instead. Run off the road by a drunk driver.

Arthur was suddenly an orphan. 

Paul came back for the funeral and he stayed to help Arthur sell the vineyard and settle the estate. It was, as it turned out, not much. Almost everything was lost to the bank, paying back loans his family had stretched thin for twenty years. What was left was put in a trust, per his mother’s will, paying out a small monthly stipend enough to buy books and some clothes, a good bottle of wine or food to live on. He’d have full control of it when he was 25, but he doubted there’d be much left of it by then. 

He finished out high school living with a couple down the road, a kindly, childless pair in their sixties Arthur had known all his life, who smelled like cream of wheat. He kept his head down. He studied. He shipped himself off to MIT was soon as he was able. 

And he joined ROTC to help pay for it all, and he learned again that family was something you made in the dirt, full of people that love you and will die too soon. 

If Arthur’s young life could yet have a moral, it would be this: that he understood what it meant to be loved, and happy, and safe. And he also knew that such things would be taken out from under you like a rug, with no warning, and that was life. 

The car came at eight and idled on the road outside Christ Church for twenty minutes while Eames slowly pulled on his own tux, did up his own bow-tie without looking, affixed jewel-studded cuff links to his jacket sleeves. Arthur didn't ask: crystal or diamond, real or fake, because honestly he didn't want to know. Eames had sent their shoes out earlier to be polished and a student had brought them back, right to Eames's door, and Arthur was trying not to think about that, either.  The tails of Eames’s tuxedo swished as he moved about the room.

Arthur watched, rapt, and Eames paused in his ministrations to sweep him close for a kiss, their warm mouths locking together effortlessly in a lingering press, a swipe of tongues against teeth, teeth against lips. Arthur wanted to grab Eames by his lapels and hold him against himself _just like this_ until it was too much, until he couldn’t breathe, and then he wanted to shove Eames down on the bed and positively ruin him. Eames whined in the back of his throat and Arthur pulled away, leaned his forehead down against Eames’s shoulder and _panted_. Then he laughed, and Eames kissed the side of his head, and Arthur murmured, “You’ll rumple my tux.” 

Eames stepped back, his eyes sweeping over Arthur, and Arthur thought he could see something shutter behind his eyes. He looked sad, maybe, or distant, but Arthur couldn’t bring himself to ask, and the moment broke. Eames turned away and went back to his own tasks.

Arthur fidgeted as he waited, tugging and smoothing bits of fabric even though the whole kit somehow fit like a glove. Eames swatted at his hands more than once, distractedly, when Arthur tried to loosen the knot at his throat or contemplated re-tucking his shirt. There was a heaviness stitched into the fabric that chafed at him: the heaviness of expectation. A man in a tux like this is was meant very much to be a certain kind of man, expected to have a very certain kind of evening. It wasn't exactly like the first time he was fitted for a ballistic vest, when he was younger and still too scrawny by half, but it was, maybe, a bit too close to it. The tux and the shoes and hair gel—they were their own kind of camo, after all. 

Eames, though… Eames didn't wear it like a soldier. He wore it like an actor, like a costume. His movements were careful, almost ritualistic. The transformation was mesmerizing. It was frightening. Arthur watched Eames pull on his jacket and become someone else too easily. Something in his face subtly shifted, cooled. If this was a role, Eames was comfortable in it, like de’d done this dozens, hundreds of times. Eames slicked his hair into place and he was done. 

Eames stepped out into the evening like he was stepping onto a stage, with Arthur a step behind, the unprepared understudy unsure of his own part, not knowing a single line. The night was cool and damp, the sky a bruised purple, and the street lamps cast sharp, deceptive shadows across their faces. Eames didn’t take Arthur’s hand and Arthur felt adrift at its absence. 

They were almost across the main quad when Arthur noticed Dom and Mal—she was wearing his coat and he was shivering, laughing. They were huddled close just inside the Porter’s Lodge and they were lost in each other’s faces, all gentle smiles and wide, tipsy eyes, and Arthur felt a pang in his chest. He missed them—right now especially, when he felt in over his head and more than a little discombobulated—but he also wished they weren’t there, weren’t going to see him like this. 

They looked up when Eames and Arthur passed. Eames, if he noticed them at all (and Arthur thought he probably didn’t), kept his eyes ahead and kept pace, his fine shoes dragging gravel behind them, kicking tiny pieces at Arthur. Embarrassed, Arthur risked a glance at them, noted their slightly agape mouths, and hurried on. He had no reason to feel humiliated, but he did. His very bones hurt with it, because _this wasn’t him_ and Dom and Mal knew that. Knew that in the fundamental way that Eames never seemed to. 

But it was too late to stop what was happening, and Eames held the door of the car open for him. He slid inside, on autopilot now, and Oxford slipped away behind them. 

There was a crystal decanter and a few glasses in the center console, which Eames helped himself to almost immediately—two fingers, then two more. Then another. The oaky sweet smell of scotch, the amber liquid catching fire under the passing streetlights. Eames knocked back his drinks like they were Coca-Cola. Arthur watched, unsure what—if anything—he should say. Eames seemed to prefer the silence. 

“What? Do you want some?” Eames eventually asked. His voice was sharp and tight, like his tux. 

Arthur shook his head and slumped back in his seat, turning away from Eames. They’d reached the country by then, stretching out dark and invisible on either side. Arthur didn’t bother asking where they were going: he wouldn’t know it anyway, even if Eames deigned to tell him. 

“Arthur,” Eames said quietly. A plea, an apology, or simply a reminder to himself that he wasn’t alone.

Arthur didn’t turn back to look at him, not immediately.

“I’m sorry.” 

Eames slid his hand across the seat between them and found Arthur’s, and held on for the rest of the drive, and Arthur thought, briefly, maybe they’d survive the night. 

Twenty minutes later they pulled up outside of a squat stone country inn. The wide drive was peppered with unassuming cars—Ford Fiestas, Fiats—and a van on its last legs.

Through the picture window Arthur could glance the clientele in the dining room, all sat down for their evening meal, drinking pints at plain tables in jeans and t-shirts. Arthur was convinced there had been a mistake, but Eames got out of the car, already a little less steady on his feet from the Scotch, and Arthur followed suit. 

Eames looked around, bored. Arthur checked his watch—nine o’clock on the dot. 

There was a roar from down the road, faint at first but growing, until a Jaguar peeled into the drive and cut its engine. Alistair stepped out from the driver’s side, followed by three other boys Arthur vaguely recognized from dinner the previous week. They wore the same as Eames and himself, sleek black tuxes with white bowties, their hair trimmed and slicked into place, their shoes gleaming even in the dim light from the inn’s one welcoming lamp. Two more cars pulled up a minute later, blocking in the locals with their haphazard parking, spilling more of the same out onto the gravel: smug, raucous boys in their well-tailored uniforms.  They were practically a harem now, this boozy group of stately boys in their Savile Row’s best. 

“Shall we?” Alastair said, circling the wagons with an even voice and a slight nod to the door. Everyone fell in line behind him. Arthur was suddenly very aware that he was the only guest. 

Inside was… cozy. Tables pushed close, the walls hung with taxidermy and dusty portraits—country chic, without the chic, smelling of game and roasted potatoes, the heavy yeasty scent of lager. The noise of cutlery against ceramic ceased at their entrance, and families turned to look at them, their brows furrowed. Their distrust, Arthur thought, was palpable. Weathered men with patchy beards and pit stains, women with poor complexions, too much eyeliner, and wrinkled, pursed mouths. The Bullingdon boys straightened up, smoothed the lapels of their dinner suits and flashed polite, placating smiles to the room. Smiles that seemed nearly genuine. Diplomatic. Maybe this is how boys like this practiced, how they prepared for their future cabinet positions, future seats in the House of Commons. A shooting range for forced congeniality with the lesser classes

The proprietor of the inn scurried up and grabbed Alistair’s hand eagerly. “Evening, gentlemen,” he said, flustered. His bald head gleamed under the low lights. “Welcome, welcome. Just this way, if you please.” He gestured to a door at the far side of the room before parading them past the other diners. They followed him down a narrow flight of stairs and into a wide, dim room—a once-upon-a-time cellar done up into a private dining room. The carpet was a deep scarlet and the stone walls were hung with more hunting paraphernalia. A boar’s head, stuffed peasants. There were cabinets of silver and china and in the center, one long oak table, just large enough for the dozen of them. 

Before they sat, a girl in a stained blouse came tripping down the stairs, her plain face kind and eager. The proprietor presented her to the group. 

“If you need anything this evening, please don’t hesitate to shout. Angharad here will be looking after you.” He tumbled the girl forward with a hand at the small of her back, like he expected her to curtsy. She didn’t curtsy, _thank god_ , but she nodded her head in a show of capitulation, and Arthur wished—he didn’t yet understand why—she hadn’t presented herself as quite so sweet and obliging. 

More smiling, closed-mouthed. “Thank you, thank you,” the group murmured, taking their seats. Angharad set menus on the table, asked if they wanted to start off with something to drink. 

“The house wine will be fine, thank you.” Alistair said. He glanced at the menu in hand. “And we’ll do the salmon salad to start, then the steak.”

“All of you?”

“Yes, thank you.” 

“Of course.” Angharad backed out of the room and the boys began immediately to snicker.

“She’s got some thighs on her, but I wouldn’t kick her out of bed,” one boy offered. 

“You wouldn’t kick a pig out of bed,” said another.

“He _didn’t_ kick that pig out of bed.”

“Hey!”

“‘I _swear_ , you fuck a pig _one time’—“_

_“_ Now now, gentlemen. Fellatio is not fucking. Did Eton teach you nothing?”

The boys blushed, laughed, and Arthur thought: what happens at all-male boarding schools, stays at all-male boarding schools. Mostly. They abided by rules Arthur could only guess at, and their furtive glances, their pinking, cherubic cheeks hinted at stories Arthur would never hear. 

Angharad returned, juggling a few bottles of wine with nothing like precision or grace. Already she looked frazzled and the evening hadn’t even begun; Arthur had half a mind to worry about her, worry about what these boys might demand of her over the course of dinner. She poured a glass for Alistair and waited for him to taste and approve. 

“That’s lovely, thank you,” he said evenly, his lips upturned in politeness. Angharad relaxed at that, smiled too brightly in response, and set about pouring everyone a glass. The room held to its silence as she passed around the table. When everyone had been seen to, she placed the extra bottles in the center (reaching past one boy, who smirked and ogled) and backed out of the room again, promising their starters would be out soon. 

There was a great exhale. In unison the boys threw back their single glass of wine. 

“Ugh, this is shit,” someone said with a groan. 

So the evening began.

The rest of the wine was uncorked and sloshed into glasses—it seemed Eames was not the only one to start in early—and a series of nonsensical toasts were made and seconded, a litany of declarations of their own current greatness, the assumption of future greater greatnesses, congratulations for each of their fine existences (and no mention of the families that provided them with such), smug dismissals of their adversaries, the mud on their boots trying to make Oxford _common._ They named names Arthur couldn’t hope to recognize—past members who had engraved their names on the cornerstones of the country, more that were still currently trying to—ones to emulate, ones to mock. Arthur wasn’t sure if he should be holding his glass aloft, too—the painful outsider, through and through—but it also seemed rude not to. He settled for holding it slightly above the table in a kind of deference, while the rest of the table thrust theirs into the air with enough enthusiasm to slop red wine down their sleeves and over the pale table cloth. 

Once everyone had had their say, Alistair held his empty wine glass high, and the others followed with theirs. No one said anything, but their faces mirrored each other’s smug, lazy smirks. Then with a flick of their wrists, the threw their glasses to the ground and let them shatter across the floor. Arthur’s gasp of surprise was at least muffled by the delicate _ring_ that echoed after. He tried to catch Eames’s eye to say _What the fuck?_ But Eames was looking ahead, unfazed. 

A boy went to the china cabinet behind him and jiggled the handle. Locked. He shrugged and smashed through a glass panel with his elbow and began grabbing out teacups and saucers and crystal goblets. He passed them around just as bottles of scotch and bourbon were produced from somewhere—the group had brought their own stash, not trusting the inn’s own selection. Arthur didn’t know liquor like he knew wine, but he knew enough to know Glenfiddich, Dalmore, Macallan weren’t exactly Jack Daniels. Glasses were poured, downed, poured again. Arthur sipped at his, his stomach burning, and wondered when they were going to eat something. 

But he didn’t want Angharad to come back with their salads. Not really. He didn’t want to see her small shocked face when she noticed the floor was littered with shards of glass and that the inn’s finery had been broken into without permission. 

But she did come back, and she did stop in the doorway with plates of salmon salad balanced on two trays, her mouth gaping like a floundering trout. Arthur looked away, ducked his head like a coward, and listened to Alistair make smooth apologies. Arthur glanced up and saw him hand her a roll of bills. She hesitated, but eventually pocketed it, and silently set everyone’s salad before them. Arthur could see the boys’ wandering hands, pinching at her, caressing, and he winced, ducked his head again. He wanted to speak up, but he didn’t know how. Their lion eyes frightened him; the table was watching her like she was prey. 

Arthur wondered if he would be prey, too. 

From the corner of his eye Arthur watched as Eames got further and further away. If he had been stiff and reserved through the first round of toasts, the liquor was loosening him up. His shoulders fell forward—as though in relief—and his mouth settled into a dopey, lecherous smile. His eyes were glassy. Or getting there, anyway. Arthur was reminded of that night in the library he first stumbled upon a sobering Eames, and how his eyes had been grey, red-rimmed pools where life and cognition went to drown. It scared Arthur a little, and maybe that was unfair. But some people were quite different when they drank, and Arthur worried Eames was well on his way to unrecognizable. Arthur tried settling his hand on Eames’s thigh, a gentle touch hidden under the table, and Eames gave him a sharp look and bounced his leg to shrug Arthur off. 

Alistair was watching Arthur, his small eyes missing nothing. He smirked, poured himself another drink, and with an unexpected swiftness, pushed back his chair and leapt on top of the table. The boys clapped, whistled, banged their hands against the wood hard enough to rattle their plates and glasses in a rhythmless cacophony. Alistair nodded to the boy at the other end of the table, which gave him a brief second to scurry from his chair before Alistair pulled back his leg and kicked. His salad plate went flying and exploded against a framed picture of a corgi on the opposite wall. Shards of glass and ceramic burst outward and the party cheered. Outdated pop music was filtering down the stairs from the dining room above—which meant  the noise of their jovial destruction would not be missed. 

Now stood in the very center of the table, Alistair raised his arms and sliced them through the air like a deranged maestro silencing his orchestra; the effect was instantaneous. Side conversations ceased, the boys finished competitively launching their plates like discuses across the room. Everyone shut their mouths like chastened schoolboys and looked up. Alistair cleared his throat. 

“Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, before we really start in on the evening, there’s an order of business that must be handled,” he said. “Because of course gentleman, I’m sure it hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice, there is an outsider in our midsts tonight: One Mr. Arthur Darling of California.” This time the group turned to Arthur. All save for Eames, who stared straight ahead. The smile was gone and his profile looked slack, vacant. 

“Arthur. Hello. How are you finding the festivities so far? Delightful? Amusing?” Alistair’s almost handsome face twisted into something briefly cruel, and Arthur shuddered. “Why don’t you come on up here? Come on.” Alistair waved Arthur up to join him on the table, which was the last thing Arthur wanted to do. He glanced at Eames, his face desperate—which only made Alistair huff in an exaggerated show of annoyance. “No manners at all,” he said, and made a tsk-ing noise as he shook his head. The rest of the table laughed half-heartedly and Eames ducked his head and looked _embarrassed._ Arthur, always such a stick in the mud, was embarrassing him by not playing along.

Arthur gathered himself and clambered onto the table with decidedly less dexterity and grace than Alistair had shown. Alistair beamed and grabbed Arthur’s shoulders, pulled him close and spun him around once so everyone at the table had a chance to smirk up at him, a look of knowing on each of their ruddy, shapeless faces. When the rotation ceased, Arthur was facing away from Alistair, but the boy never let falter his vice-like grip on Arthur’s shoulders. 

“Fantastic. So, the thing is, we’re not really here for your amusement,” Alistair stage-whispered into Arthur’s ear. “In fact, rather, you’re here for _ours_. Isn’t that right, Eames?”

Arthur’s stomach sank. 

He looked down at Eames, imploring him to say _something,_ to explain what was going on,but his lips remained a tight, pale line and he refused to meet Arthur’s gaze. Arthur’s eyes flickered to the eager, expectant faces around the table watching him. Some were resting their chins on their folded fists, leaning on the table, like they were expecting a show. 

“Come on man, speak up!” Alistair said, stomping his feet on the table. He gestured for the boy on the other side of Eames to nudge him to attention. “Regale us with the story. We _so_ want to share in the amusement.” 

Eames steadied himself from the not-so-gentle knock and looked at Alistair, then _finally_ , to Arthur. He looked guilty, Arthur thought, though he didn’t know of what. Like a puppy who’d just destroyed your most precious pair of loafers. What had Eames done? Arthur shook his head to show his confusion, silently pleading with Eames to tell him what was happening. 

“Ugh,” said Alistair, spinning Arthur around to face him. “Arthur, _darling_ , since Eames here doesn’t feel like being particularly helpful, would you like us to enlighten you?” He cocked one eyebrow and waited for Arthur to answer. Arthur both did and didn’t want to hear the rest, but eventually he nodded. 

“Lovely. So, _basically_ , Arthur. You’re our main event!”

“Roast ‘em!” a boy shouted. Arthur startled but Alistair’s hands on his shoulders kept him from spooking. Other boys chimed in, a slow-starting chant of _Roast! Roast! Roast!,_ somehow in rhythm with the loud thumping of Arthur’s heart. 

“A Christmas roast” Alistair continued, paying little mind to the noise of the crowd, “Except this year, instead of a pig for someone to stick their cock into, we have _you._ Or rather, Eames has had you. _”_

Arthur shoved Alistair away and began backing up. He could feel the table become unsteady under his feet at the re-distribution of weight. 

“Oh don’t be like that. We’re not going to _attack you_ or anything. We’re _gentlemen_. Wasn’t Eames’s behavior utterly _gentlemanly_ with you?” The room laughed, louder, drunker, but Arthur could barely hear it above the buzzing in his ears. His body had gone stiff, ready to fight. 

“Huh. Maybe Eames is a better actor than we give him credit for,” Alistair said, watching Arthur with a critical eye. He glanced down at Eames fondly, and Arthur’s eyes followed—he was scared, suddenly, of what he’d see, to see, exactly, how Eames was watching him. Because one thing was for sure: Eames was not coming to his rescue. Eames had thrown Arthur to the _fucking wolves._

Arthur caught Eames wince, ever so slightly, and reach for his empty glass. Someone helpfully slid him the Macallan with a laugh, and Arthur watched as he helped himself to a generous pour with shaking fingers. 

“Do you get it now, Arthur?” Alistair asked. His voice was gentle and condescending, as though he were speaking to a dumb child. 

Arthur didn’t, not completely, and he hated that he didn’t. Reluctantly he shook his head no, still staring down at Eames, trying to _will_ him to meet Arthur’s eye. 

Suddenly Arthur became aware of the sharp snickers circling him, passing from one boy to the next like a contagion. He swung his head from one side of the table to the other, to find the source, tracking the tide as it ebbed cruelly just out of reach. 

They were passing something, from one to the next. Playing cards? Arthur caught flashes of white, shuffled from hand to hand. A boy Arthur couldn’t name, with a blocky head and beady eyes, made a loud retching sound and tossed the cards onto the table near Arthur’s feet. 

Except they weren’t cards, facing up. They were photos. Photos of _him._

Half a dozen shots, grainy and ill-lit, taken on a phone, but still: unmistakable. Arthur in bed, half-covered in silk sheets that weren’t (would never be) his own, torso bare, hair mused. 

Eames had taken these of him. Eames has worked him up, pushed him away, asked him to _sleep_ (so innocent, so trusting), then snapped fucking photos of him to share with his mates. To sell his own fucking story. 

Arthur blinked up owlishly at Eames, who was grinning dopily into his whiskey.   _Gone_ , Arthur thought. Checked out. 

“Someone give our Eames a bloody Oscar, then.” Alistair sighed dramatically. “Let me dumb it down a  bit, Arthur. We like to provide our new recruits with a series of challenges throughout the year. Have a bit of of a laugh. Eames’s challenge was to fuck the most fastidious prude in all of Oxford. We decided early on you fit the ticket quite nicely. Americans—they’re actually pretty easy, typically; or the girls are, anyway. But you Rhodes scholars are kind of reliably uptight. It’s bloody wonderful, though, the chase. The game. Tracking you from library to library, laboratory to lecture hall. Touring you around Oxford like something out of bloody Jane Austen. I bet Eames showed you his favorite spot, yeah? The University Church of St. Mary the Virgin.” The Alistair _laughed_ and something in Arthur _shattered_.

A game. A _hazing ritual._ That’s all it’d been, that’s all any of it had ever been. And now Eames wouldn’t even look at him. 

“You didn’t think it was real, did you? Oh. Oh god, gentleman, look. _He did_. He thought Eames was actually—gasp!—in love with him.”

Arthur was momentarily stunned. He blinked and focused on stopping the laugh that was bubbling up in his throat, despite the sharp pain in his chest, because _seriously_? People didn’t behave this way outside of movies, right? Decent people didn’t treat other people like they were chess pieces. Pawns.

Except for politicians, maybe. And future politicians. 

Arthur looked around, trying to decide if anyone at the table seemed at all decent. 

His eyes rested on the crown of Eames’s head, which was all he could see from such great heights. Eames was bowing forward, looking at his hands in his lap. 

“This isn’t you,” Arthur found himself saying, “I know you, Eames, and this isn’t you. Tell me they’re wrong. Tell me they’re lying and I’ll believe you, I really will.” He didn’t want to beg, but he couldn’t help it in that moment. It was too much to lose so quickly—to have everything he had with Eames pulled out from under him. To be unmoored and set adrift, alone. 

Around the table the boys crooned a chorus of _Ooooh_ ’s, squalls of joy and debasement. They laughed, poured each other more drinks and clanked their glasses. They got restless, started throwing their napkins at Eames, then their silverware, trying to rouse him, provoke him, like crowds at the Coliseum, wanting to see the lion pounce. Wanting to see someone devoured.  

Eames looked up at Arthur at last and shook his head, minutely. “It was a bit of fun and now it’s done, yeah? You thought you knew me so well that first night we met. Well, congratulations. You were right.” 

The room erupted in boyish cries, whistles, jeers. Bottles were smashed against the table—empty and not, roughing the finish, staining the rug—and cold salmon filets sailed through the air. Some hit the walls, more hit Arthur—hit his legs, his tense shoulders; one slapped against his front and slid down to his navel before falling, limp, to the table, leaving a pink streak of grease all the way down his dress shirt. _Eames’s_ dress shirt, borrowed or stolen or purchased just for this moment, to attire Arthur for his grand finale. Arthur thought he’d be sick if he kept it on a moment longer, and quickly began to tear off the jacket, the shirt—such fine fabric, it fit him so well. He dropped it into a spilled puddle of whiskey. 

“Oh, is the show not done?” Alistair cooed, clapping campily. 

Arthur turned back to him, seething. Alistair didn’t flinch—he possessed the unflappable demeanor of the privileged; content in the knowledge that nothing in the world could really touch him, not with his money, his connections—but neither did he meet Arthur’s threat with one of his own. He looked more curious than cruel, like Arthur was some particular creature for being capable of such hurt, such shows of anguish. Alistair didn’t look _regretful_ for his part, but maybe he did look little in awe—like it surprised him that any one person could _feel_ like Arthur did, could be roused enough to show it—something his stiff English upper lip would never allow. Probably Alistair had seen all the wonders the material world had to offer, all the extravagances, all the beauty, and had been expected to merely quirk a corner of his mouth at the pleasure, and that was his life. 

Arthur’s keening—animal, palpable—must seem like something else entirely.  

It would be easy to hate him, Arthur knew; to glare and snarl, to seize him by his lapels and _shake_ —but Alistair had never pretended to be anything but what he was, and in a way, for that, he was absolved. No, the real monster was not the ring leader, not the man with the megaphone; it was the quiet man in the corner, letting it all happen. The hapless boy who kept his head down and did as he was told, shutting his eyes to the very carnage he was creating. 

And so Arthur thought, here, let me take something _from you._ Let me steal a bit of your glory and admit to all these people that we never did—that your initiation rite is unconsummated. 

But, looking around, Arthur realized the room wouldn’t care. Not really. Eames was theirs now, and they’d believe whatever he told them to refute Arthur’s accusation. And Arthur wasn’t sure he could stand to hear what Eames might conjure up out of thin air: stories of him on his knees, a slut, begging. They’d believe anything.

And that Eames had apparently found Arthur so repulsive that he decided to woo him and string him along for _a month_ just to avoid actually fucking him? The indignity was too much to say aloud. And so Arthur didn’t.

Eames was pulled out of his chair and to his feet by a pair of his mates who had become bored with the show. One tilted Eames’s head back while the other poured bourbon down his throat, straight from the bottle, and Eames let it happen, had gone slack in their grip. Arthur watched, bemused, angry, hurt, and a little… pitying? He had thought Eames was _so much more_ than all of this, but he was wrong. Eames was exactly this: a boy too rich for his own good, stupid with youth and promise, careless with himself and more so with others, his eyes always on the horizon, his arms outstretched for his next new toy. Because that’s all Arthur had been: a shiny new toy to distract him, just for a moment. And like any boy used to new toys, his fancy hadn’t been held for long.

Hadn’t he expected this all along? Hadn’t be warned himself, before the start, that Eames would break his heart? That even if it was lovely, briefly and wondrously so, it would not last—because beautiful things didn’t; that happiness had seasons, too. But never could he have imagined it’d be like this, like road burn across his insides, stinging. Humiliating. And to stand there on high, apart from the crowd and looking down, watching Eames recede, watching him move away and carry on as though Arthur were nothing at all. Not even a blip. Eames’s glassy eyes swept over Arthur once, but Arthur knew he wasn’t seeing him. Not anymore. 

“Want a drink for the road?” Alistair offered. “Or maybe some cash for a cab?” 

His dismissal. 

“Fuck you,” Arthur said, exhausted, and leapt down from the table. 

The fight had gone out of him. He just wanted to go home.

He paused at the door, just for a moment, but—nothing. Eames was letting him go.

_Our revels now are ended_ , Arthur thought, ascending the stairs. _His_ revels, anyway. The party carried on without him, the bacchanalian cries of mirth and debauchery wafting up behind him, stealing into the main dining room, souring the faces of all who were forced to listen, who couldn’t speak to one another over the table for the sound of crashing plates and shattered glasses. Everyone turned their eyes on him as he stepped forward in just his trousers and undershirt, his face flush and tacky with dried sweat. Two dozen scornful looks, disgusted looks. The weight of judgement and blame. The bald proprietor who had shown them downstairs looked skittish and regretful, and stayed back near the kitchen at Arthur’s approach. No love lost there, Arthur supposed. He ducked his head and headed for the front door.

The temperature had plummeted outside and Arthur could see his hot breath like weak clouds before his face. Without a proper shirt, without a jacket, the December air settled against his skin like an icy balm, burning. He stuck his hands into his trouser pockets but already he knew: they were empty. Eames had convinced him to leave behind his wallet and keys—he wouldn’t need them and anyway, they’d only ruin the line of his tux. Was that just another part in his plotted cruelty? To strand Arthur with nothing, lost to the Oxfordshire countryside?

Don’t panic. _Think_. Work it out. They’d driven for, what twenty minutes? More like thirty. Fifteen miles, easy. But in what direction? Surely this wasn’t so unlike the field exercise they’d done in ROTC, though at least back then he’d had a compass. The road in front of the inn was dark in either direction, no shops, no houses. He sighed, shivered, and knowing he wouldn’t be welcome back inside, resigned himself to walking back. If he stuck to the road—he vaguely recalled it being a pretty straight shot—he could do it in four hours. Three if he jogged, kept himself warm, though he didn’t quite have the shoes for it. He wasn’t helpless. He wasn’t _like them,_ spoiled and entitled _._

Arthur set off under the moon and the North star, keeping to the side of the road, letting the cold air numb him in all the ways he needed to be numb. His heart, finally, stopped racing, his pulse slowed. The ache there, deep in his chest, was lost to his blistering feet and tingling fingertips. He couldn’t feel his nose after a while, and he could no longer see his breath. Occasionally he’d pass through little towns, hamlets really, closed up and dark for the night, with signs that pointed him on toward Oxford. He would walk down the center of their deserted High Streets—if they could even be called that, when there was barely more than a post office and a Tesco to them—and feel like the last man alive, scouring the earth for something he left behind. 

But there was nothing. A clear, inky sky peppered with faint pinpricks of light, the distant hoots of barn owls, a car on some far off motorway, going home. Arthur was exhausted in his body, weary in his bones. Empty. He hadn’t realized just how much room Eames had begun to take up in his mind until he was just—gone, leaving a fist of grey matter, blank and throbbing, where Arthur refused to think of him. Because that’s what Arthur did, piece by piece, mile by mile, on his long walk back to Oxford—he eradicated Eames from his head: his wonky smile, his sea glass eyes, his artist’s hands with their careful touch, which had made Arthur feel so precious, so _loved._ He willed the neural pathways to die. 

Arthur thought it was a terrible thing to be loved and left behind. But he knew now it was worse to have never been loved at all. 


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SORRY. I promised regular posting and then this happened. Months of months of me feeling really down about this fic because everything/everyone seemed super irredeemable. And yeah, this chapter isn't going to help. BUT I PROMISE YOU: Somehow, some way, there will be a happy ending.

It was almost light when Arthur finally hit the far end of Banbury Road and followed it the rest of the way into town, past St. Hugh's and St. Antony's, St. Catherine's. Exhausted evergreens draping themselves over high stone walls, the distant rumbling of rubbish trucks lurching and stalling. The first rumblings of life once more awakened, and Arthur felt close to crying, it was so beautiful. He cut across town and nearly collapsed on the pavement outside of Magdalen, his legs gone wobbly, his feet raw and burning. 

"Late night, eh?" A boy came into view and sidled up beside Arthur where he sat, propped up against the sheer walls outside of the college. The boy pulled a bottle of vodka from inside his coat and took a swig before offering it to Arthur, who was so thirsty he didn't think twice about accepting it. He swallowed it down, relieved. Dawn was still faint and the street lights cast shadows over Arthur's new companion, pretty and unfamiliar. But Arthur knew this was how it worked: there was a special kind of camaraderie to be had in this, the long walk home in last night's clothes. It was the stuff of all good middle age reminisces. 

"Come on then, up you go," the boy said, grabbing Arthur under his arm to drag him back up to his feet. "We can't have a don finding you out here on the street in a puddle of your own sick, can we?"

Arthur didn't feel capable of speech, and thought he was probably half-delirious from the cold. 

"Christ man, you're freezing," the boy said. He shook his head and smirked. "Was a bloody good night, I hope."

The boy helped Arthur all the way back to Holywell Ford and dropped him at his doorstep with a jovial, drunken salute. Arthur dug around under the stones out front until he found the spare key and let himself inside, at last. Upstairs he peeled off his muddied shoes and bloodied socks, climbed into bed, and slept for twelve hours. 

It was Dom who finally came to rouse him the next afternoon, a chipped mug of milky tea in one hand, a chipped mug of instant soup in the other. He shrugged when Arthur peeled his eyes open and stared blankly at the proffered drinks, and said, "It's all I could find in your kitchen."

"What are you doing here?" Arthur asked weakly, his voice gravelly from sleep and exposure. 

"Mal and I are heading to Serre Chevalier tomorrow, for the long break. Her family rents a place there every year.  Apparently she's going to teach me to ski."

Arthur sat up and continued to stare at Dom, blinking slowly. 

Dom reached over to place both mugs on Arthur's bedside table andsettled himself back on the edge of the bed. He looked down at his hands, began wringing them half-heartedly. "I heard," he began.

"Oh god," Arthur said, burying his face in his hands. If _Dom_ —who fancied himself so above petty college gossip—had already heard the tale, Arthur wasn't sure how he was meant to ever show his face around the university again. Whatever ache felt so intimately seared on his insides was only the start; now there would be the humiliation, too. The stinging balm of _a reputation._ Of being taken, of being had. Arthur could feel his face burning. 

"It's okay," Dom said, sounding surprised. "We've all been there."

Arthur pulled his hands away, his mouth falling open a little bit.

"You…?"

"I mean, maybe not since I was a _freshman_ ," Dom said with a small laugh, looking away in thought. "I woke on my _professor's_ front lawn once _. Dressed as Dracula._ I'm pretty sure it was a Tuesday morning or something. His kid shoved me awake on her way out to catch the school bus." His face was relaxed, clear of judgement. He looked young, Arthur thought, wearing a worn jumper and jeans. No tweed, no starched collar. A kid, still, remembering kid things. 

Finally he seemed to register Arthur's slack-jawed expressed, his furrowed brow. 

"Dan Hess told me he found you washed up like wreckage on the front steps this morning," Dom explained. He kicked one of Arthur's dress shoes, which lay scuffed and abandoned on the floor. "Rough night?" 

"You could say that."

So Dom _hadn't_ heard, then. Not really. Or not yet. People would hear eventually—what was the point of such a stunt if Eames and his mates didn't advertise it afterward. If they didn't gloat and make an example of him, naive and fragile. American. Pathetic. But here in this moment, Arthur was tucked in bed, aching but still alive, and a friend had brought him tea and soup. 

A _friend_? 

_"_ Are we friends still?" Arthur hedged nervously. 

Dom looked startled. "Of course we are. Aren't we?" 

"But… what happened with Eames…" Arthur winced. 

"Mal and I had no right," Dom said. He sighed and looked _abashed_ , which Arthur really couldn't stomach. "I'm sorry. We're friends, of course. _We're your friends_. We don't get to do that."

"Don't, don't. Please."

Dom looked startled, almost scolded, and straighten up. Embarrassed to have misread—

"I mean. You were right. You both were," Arthur said in a painful rush. "You and Mal were right about Eames and about… everything." His voice went quiet, gentle and hurt. "I'm sorry." 

"Oh. Oh, _Arthur_." Dom looked at him. "Should I… I should get Mal. She'd be better at this. Uh. I—I'm sorry. What happened?"

Arthur shook his head. 

"We didn't _want_ to be right, Arthur. You know, right? We weren't trying to—you know, _ruin_ anything."

"—I know. I get that now. And I was a total asshole. I'm just—I'm really fucking sorry." 

Both men were quiet for a moment. Arthur had drawn his knees up to his chest, his ruined feet still hiding under the blanket. Dom scratched at the back of his head, tugged at a string coming loose on his sweater. Then he nodded: _case closed._

"Are you going away for the break?" Dom asked

"No," Arthur said, realizing for the first time what that meant exactly: a month of near solitude, the city drained by—what, half? Three quarters? Students going home, students going on holiday, professors retiring to their homes for a few weeks with their families, shopkeepers driving down to Sussex to visit their sisters or up to Blackpool to track down their rascally younger brothers. Some people would stay behind, the Type A-est of As, happily drowning in their research; international students, unable to get home. Arthur. "No, I'll probably stick around here. Get some work done."

Dom smiled faintly. "Then at least come out with us tonight. We'll do a little Christmas dinner, just the three of us."

It seemed so easy, this forgiveness. Dom wasn't asking him to grovel. He wasn't taunting Arthur with repeated iterations of "I told you so." On the whole he didn't seem to want Arthur to suffer at all—anymore than he had—for his hubris. Arthur had apologized and that'd been good enough for him. Arthur was reminded suddenly that not everyone required such pomp and circumstance; for some people, life was an uncomplicated business and friendships were straightforward and un-cruel. He knew then that if ever Dom called upon a favor down the line, Arthur would remember this unfussy moment of absolution, and he'd be there to fix whatever Dom needed fixed. 

"Thanks," Arthur said. "That'd be lovely."

"Do you want to… talk about it?" Dom asked.

Arthur didn't. He'd thought about it _for hours_ during his long walk home. He'd gone from angry to distraught to everything in between—he'd felt beaten and ragged, stripped emotionally bare, violated—and he was, at last, numb. And gratefully so. He felt no need to stoke the fire again, to feel the flames licking at his ribs, burning away his very marrow. No. He meant to remain an ash-filled body for as long as possible. In storybooks, didn't something better always emerge from such ruin? 

Everyone would go, the university would quiet, and Arthur would focus on resuming the life he'd planned out for himself in September. 

"No," Arthur answered. 

Relief passed briefly across Dom's politically correct face, and he gave a sharp nod. He fidgeted, looked at his watch. "The Angel and Greyhound at six?"

"Yeah, sure."

Dom stood up and leaned over to awkwardly pat Arthur on the shoulder. "Drink your tea and your soup. You look like shit. Mal's going to have a fit."

Arthur grabbed a mug and took an exaggerated sip. "Thanks, Dom," Arthur murmured sincerely into the watery, lukewarm broth. 

Dom left with a small wave and a shake of his head.

Arthur propped himself up in bed and finished the powdered soup and the cooling black tea Dom had conjured up from probably the last teabag in someone else's package of PG Tips. When his stomach had settled a little, Arthur wobbled to the shower, turning the water on as hot as it would go. He stood under the punishing stream until his skin blushed an angry, raw red, and afterward he shivered violently as he stood in his cold room in his towel, riffling through his wardrobe. He pulled on a pair of black trousers and his nicest sweater—cashmere, a deep emerald that paled him, but in a delicate, becoming way. All the while Arthur's mind was carefully blank. He threw on his jacket and rummaged around under his bed for the two small packages he'd shoved under there—presents for Dom and Mal he'd bought weeks ago and ignored, because of… everything. 

It had snowed—or it had tried to, anyway. The grass crunched under his boots. It wasn't a New England snow by any means, which could disappear whole city blocks with its small mountain ranges of dirty powder shoveled bodily out of the streets. No, this was—this was practically nothing. A few hours of lackluster flakes melting instantly into the dirt, on the pavement, followed by an afternoon of spitting rain, cold enough to leave the university crusted over with frost and thin sheets of ice. It was nothing much at all, but it transformed things completely. The ubiquitous grey, the ubiquitous damp—it all took on a particular holiday glow. The air was crisp and loose, and as Arthur walked to the pub, his hands buried in his pockets, brightly wrapped packages under one arm, he tried to feel buoyed by the scene. Around him on the High Street students laughed, their cheeks and noses rosy, their eyes bright. They popped in and out of shops, hunting for trinkets for their friends or small treats to bring home to parents and eager young siblings. There was an ease to their mirth, the relief that came from one's work being done and put away for a while, from passing grades and compliments from tutors and supervisors. They had survived, these fine folk. They would live to tell their wistful tales of Oxford excellence.

Life goes on, Arthur reminded himself, even as his shoulders fell a bit. Life goes on. What else could it do? 

The pub was warm and strung about with colorful fairy lights, bulbs blinking out of sync while the radio played a treacle-sweet cover of "Last Christmas." Arthur was barely inside, pulling the door shut again against the cold, when Mal launched herself at him. He caught her in both arms, startled, his presents clattering to the wet floor near his feet. 

"Ma puce," she said, wrapping herself around him. 

"Hey, Mal," he said into her hair. Arthur suddenly felt a little unsteady, like the day's careful blankness might shatter under her gentle gaze. He was grateful to be able to hide his face for a moment against her skin. He had missed her. It'd barely been more than a week but _he_ _missed her_ , missed her gardenia musk and her soothing, lilting French voice murmuring into his ear. Missed where her small fingers stroked the back of his neck, comforting. He felt young like this, boyish, tucked into her arms, and he'd missed it. He wanted so badly to stay like that all night and have her tell him that things would be okay.

Mal pulled away after a long moment, only to seize Arthur's face in her delicate hands. Arthur wasn't sure what Dom had told her, or what she'd heard herself, but she looked at him, searched his eyes,  and Arthur _knew:_ Mal understood. Somehow she knew it'd all gone wrong,  and she said, "There is pain, yes? Because it was real, for you. But mon trésor, it will not always be so."

Arthur was appalled to find his eyes were prickling, clouding over, and he blinked them rapidly to clear them again, embarrassed. Mal clucked at him like the mother hen she was, kissed his damp cheeks, and whispered just what he needed to hear: that it was fine, that it would be fine, that he had them, and that he was so, _so_ loved.

When at last she pulled away, she wiped his face and ran her fingers through his hair, sorting the mess he'd made of himself. "Thank you," he whispered, and she smiled, slipped her hand into his and dragged him to the back of the pub where Dom was holding their table. Arthur had grabbed up their gifts from the floor at the last second, wiping off the grime as well as he could with his jacket sleeve, and he set them on the table. 

"Can we open them now?" Dom asked Mal, like she was in charge of such decisions, which of course she was. She laughed at his childish enthusiasm and shrugged, _sure_ , and Dom tore into the small package, peels of red and gold paper fluttering to the floor. Mal opened hers delicately, prying apart the seams without a single tear. They were simple gifts in the end, but Dom and Mal cooed over them equally: a sturdy, leather-bound journal for Dom and a geometric glass brooch for Mal— it had reminded Arthur of a painting she'd had shown him once and said she loved.

They ordered drinks and food to share. Arthur put on a brave face, ignored his own bone-deep weariness, and laughed at the music and at the bad Christmas sweater the bartender was wearing. He was trying very hard, he thought, to be okay. Dom asked how Arthur felt about his work, and the end of term, and Mal steered the conversation to talk of home and family, of Christmas markets and roasted chestnuts and the year her younger sister had received from Santa the water color set she was _certain_ was meant for her, and how her subsequent tantrum had nearly spoiled Christmas morning for everyone. Dom talked about palm trees strung with lights and a make-believe ice skating rink the city poured and maintained in a parking lot four blocks from the beach. Arthur admitted that his Jewish family did not eat Chinese food, but rather drank lots of wine and watched cheesy holiday movies on TV, because his mother loved them. 

Dom and Mal sat close together, opposite Arthur. Mal stole forkfuls of Dom's mushy peas and Dom finished Mal's sausage when she pushed her plate away and said she was full. They watched each other's faces when they spoke, small unconscious smiles tugging at the corners of their mouths, and Arthur was a little bemused, a little enchanted. Dom's hand finding Mal's atop the table, stilling her twitching fingers, rubbing his thumb over her bitten-down, nicotine-stained fingernails. A curtain drawn back slowly throughout the night, revealing to Arthur that it'd finally happened: Dom and Mal had figured it out. And maybe it would've been sickening with anyone else, maybe even a little cruel, given the night he'd had, but it was _Dom and Mal_ , and Arthur could only find relief in it. The relief of _finally_. 

"So. What changed?" Arthur asked, loose with cheap, spiced wine. Heswirled the cinnamon stick in his glass, poking at an orange slice.

Mal watched Arthur closely as she considered his question, looking as though she didn't want to say. Dom like he didn't know _how_ to say it, stupid and lost in love like a first-timer. 

Finally Mal said, "It seemed silly to ignore something that could be good. With so many people running around calling ugly things _love_ , I thought, well… I have a responsibility as a Frenchwoman, no? To be an example. Show the world what real love is."

Arthur winced, and Mal's hand shot across the table to settle on his wrist. He looked up and saw in her eyes she hadn't said it to be cruel. She wasn't trying to rub her own happiness in. Rather she was looking at Arthur like _he_ had done something incredible. As though his troubles had been an inspiration, and served as a reminder to be grateful and seize a good thing while she could. _It's rare_ , she seemed to say, _You made me realize just how rare it is, to be loved._ Maybe Dom's love was not poetry. But it was honest, and he was a good man, and that was more than a lot of people get. 

Arthur nodded and smiled faintly at them both, giving the blessing they hadn't asked for, but needed. If Arthur couldn't have love for himself, it was still some comfort to know he had given love to others, and the rest of the evening passed quickly, in a dull, comfortable haze. For a few hours Arthur was able to forget about the sick feeling deep in his body, because he had his friends again, and there was nothing to be risked by having them. When they smiled at him, he didn't have to doubt them. 

When they had sufficiently warmed themselves with stories and sausages and mulled wine, and when the radio stuttered to a stop and the bartender began wiping down the bar, they finally bundled themselves up to head back out into the cold. Arthur was wrapping his new scarf around his neck—a gift from Dom and Mal both, still too expensive to justify, but he loved it desperately—when he stepped outside and ran straight into Dom's back. Dom was stopped on the pavement, with Mal beside him, the pair of them acting as a shield to block Arthur from the road. 

"What—?" Arthur started, but then he saw, through the wedge between his two friends' heads: 

Eames. 

He was standing on the far side of the street, hunched against the wind, hands in his pockets. Arthur couldn't make out the exact expression on his face, but Eames was watching them, and it didn't seem at all like an accident that he was there. Dom tensed up. Mal's hand seized Dom's upper arm in a vice-like grip, her face stony. 

"Darling," Eames began, the word sounding sad and slurred in his mouth.  Arthur just barely caught it, carried across on a wintery breath of air. 

Eames opened his mouth to say more, but before he had the chance, in something of a flurry, Mal rushed at him. Without saying anything, she slapped him. Her ringed-fingers caught and left a gouge in his skin. A red mark that would sting and then bruise.Eames stumbled back and fell to one knee. He held up his hands, palms out, fingers spread. _Please_ , Eames said, or so Arthur thought. He couldn't hear anything for the gentle roar of the wind through the narrow street, the exhausted trundle of a nearby city bus. But Mal ignored it, whatever he'd said, and struck him again. Eames slouched over, hands on the pavement now, his other leg buckling. He turned his head to spit. He didn't fight back. When he raised his head he stared around Mal's legs to find Arthur, to lock eyes with him. Eames's face was already swelling, pink like a raw slice of ham, and his eyes—Arthur didn't know what he saw there. They were glassy, and Arthur might've been tempted to say there was something remorseful there, a ghostly yearning for absolution, but maybe it was just the streetlamp light casting hopeful shadows. Mostly he looked wrecked, dirty and half-dazed. Mal seized Eames by the lapels of his coat and brought his face close to hers; he must've gone cross-eyed trying to look at her—and he was looking at her, because how could you not? That kind of rage, that kind of beauty. She spoke to him in mean-sounding French Arthur couldn't understand. The words were quick and sharp and Eames could only blink slowly in response, star-struck by her furry. Mal held Eames there for a breathless minute before eventually shoving him away, back onto all fours on the pavement like an animal. She walked back to where Arthur and Dom were standing stock-still and stunned.

Arthur thought maybe he should speak up—he wasn't a violent person by nature, nor did he like being treated like a damsel in need of defending—but he kept quiet. The truth was, Arthur felt fragile just then, felt he'd been made brittle by Eames's vicious refusal to stand up for him, and it was comforting to think someone still found him worth fighting for. Dom threw an arm around his neck, possessive, while Mal's arms went around his waist. Together they led Arthur away. 

In the morning Arthur met Dom and Mal for an early breakfast and walked them to the train station after the tea in the bottom of their mugs had gone cold. Dom pressed a key to his room into Arthur's hand ("Water my ficus?") and let Arthur carry his duffle bag for him, as he focused on dragging his suitcase—it had a wonky wheel that scraped the pavement—the mile and a half there. Mal, pleased as punch, carried with her a single weekender bag. The morning was cool but the skies were blue, and Mal had suggested the fresh air could only do them good. They didn't talk about any kind of sadness at all. 

After he'd seen them off with a twinge of melancholy, Arthur returned to his room to gather up some books and papers to take with him to Dr. Charles's lab, where he'd already volunteered himself for extra duty over the holiday. It would be quiet, the professor had assured him. The sleep study was concluded and the usual subjects dismissed. There would be no more disrupting dreams. Instead there was data entry to be done, and maybe new research to scour—Arthur's young eyes would be useful when Dr. Charles's own grew exhausted. 

The professor brought Arthur tea when he needed to stretch his own legs, and they discussed preliminary trends in the data. Arthur paused in considering their last study, and asked, "If we are all of us processing information during dreaming—if we're moving things to long-term memory, for example—when we're waking our subjects up, we're disrupting that process. Could data be lost that way? Memories, menial facts some student spent all afternoon cramming into their brain in anticipation of tomorrow's test? Is that being lost, permanently, when we wake them up prematurely? Does it just fall away into some sort of unconstructed space in the brain?"

Dr. Charles took off his glasses, folded them gently, and tapped them against his temple, thinking. 

"Theoretically…"

" _Theoretically_ , then, could you do it on purpose?" Arthur asked. "I know what you said about extraction—I know you don't… it was only just a _theory_. But your patient with PTSD—could we interrupt the memories his brain is continuously re-encoding during dreaming, by waking him just so? Interrupt the nightmare to disappear the trigger? Let it fall away into some kind of harmless, un-constructed space? But with something like shared dreaming—if that were ever possible , could you—I don't know—somehow prompt a mark to engage in a certain kind of dreaming, and then disrupt it? Could you _plant a memory?_ " The brain created false memories all the time; it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that such a phenomenon could be harnessed, controlled. 

"Are you having bad dreams, Arthur?" 

Arthur sighed. "No, professor," he said honestly. Arthur thought of it now as a kindness, the blankness of his mind when he finally gave in to sleep. Nothing haunted him there. There were no regrets, no false hopes.

"Then your imagination is exemplary, Mr. Darling." The professor tapped a stack of articles on the desk with one crooked finger. "Maybe take a break from the data entry and do some annotating for me?" 

Arthur shut his eager mouth and nodded. 

The fact was, Arthur rarely dreamed at all—or none that he ever remembered, which was what people said when he told them he didn't dream. "Of course you _dream_ ; everyone _dreams_. Some people just aren't good at remembering them when they wake up," they would say, like it was a failing of Arthur's that he woke each morning with a clear head and a—briefly—blank mind. Was that ineptitude? Was dreaming like baseball, running, chess? A skill one could improve with dedicated practice? Except Arthur had been trying all his life and he couldn't think of a single dream he'd ever had, even as a child. No monsters under the bed, no nightmares that a T-Rex was going to eat him whole.

Arthur learned early not to push the topic. Not to _insist_ he didn't dream, because he knew what it got him:  dismissal, when he was lucky; perturbed looks when he wasn't. "Should you, like, go see a doctor or something?" his first girlfriend had suggested. It was eighth grade and neither of them knew anything at all, except to be on the lookout for weirdos and oddballs—reputations were delicate and suddenly very important at 13. So Arthur checked out books about dreaming from the local library and read them under the covers at night; more often than not he fell asleep with his cheek pressed to their pages. And if that didn't exactly teach him how to dream, they taught him now to pretend. 

When he got older he worried about his brain, and what might be going on in it that Arthur didn't know, that he wasn't privy to. Sometimes he wondered if there was something so bad inside him that his brain protected itself by erasing the knowledge of it anew each night. Other people got glimpses into their minds, little slices of subconscious processing, memories moving from short-term to long-term memory; they dreamed of people they knew once upon a time, their nearly forgotten faces alive again for a fleeting REM cycle—Arthur was most envious of that—but Arthur had nothing. Just a black hole of unconsciousness, eating away at him. An absence at the very heart of him that suddenly felt painfully, startlingly palpable, defining. Everything goes away or never was, Arthur thought morosely, to make sure he felt the sting. 

So he read, he studied. Textbooks and journal articles, research, MRIs. He looked through other students' dream journals and mapped their brains, and tried to understand this simple complex thing that was so easy to everyone else, and so impossible for him. He had dug into the dusty, forgotten archives of dream theory and dragged Dr. Charles's work back into the light, because if Arthur couldn't dream on his own, maybe he could share in someone else's. Maybe he could know, for once, what it felt like to wake up with a story fading away in your head. 

Dr. Charles emerged again from his office late that afternoon, after Arthur had nearly worked his way through the photocopies left for him. It was good, the work—it kept his brain preoccupied. It kept the images at bay, at least a little: Eames, striking in his tux, turning away from Arthur as he plead; Eames, collapsible and too much the mongrel, swaying blearily in the middle of a quiet street, still unable to speak. The professor set another cup of tea before Arthur and picked up one of the annotated pieces—an article proposing the use of MRI neuroimaging to ferret out false memories—and flipped through it silently, his eyes scanning the marginalia. He looked neither bored nor dismissive of Arthur's notes, which were cramped and exhaustive. When he finished, he looked down at Arthur over his glasses. Waiting. 

"You don't see a correlation here, Mr. Darling? Between false memories and dreams?" the professor asked.

"With all due respect, sir, people don't realize the memories are false—that's what makes them so problematic. People typically realize, at least after the fact, that they're dreaming."

"Except sometimes they don't. Or their mind doesn't. They wake up from a bad dream and, even when they _know it's a dream_ , their body reacts as though it's real. They wake up crying. They wake up and feel pain. I had a man in here once—poor lad—who woke from his nightmares covered in bruises he swore corresponded to places his father had beat him as a child. Is that reality, or a false memory? The line is thinner than people think. The brain is a remarkable thing, Mr. Darling—we know this. What it can do is amazing. What it can do should also frighten the daylights out of us."

The professor tossed the paper back onto the stack and leaned on the desk, his arms crossed over his chest. "Of course I hope there is never a time when you can no longer tell reality from dreams, Mr. Darling. But if such a time comes? Maybe then this research wouldn't seem so foolish."

Arthur bristled at the insinuation. _Foolish_ _Arthur_. 

"Where does theory end, professor? For you?" Arthur asked.

"Arthur…"

"You have spent a career—a life— _thinking_ about it. Speculating. But have you ever actually tried—"

"To what? Build a machine, synthesize a drug? I'm not an engineer, or a chemist. To some I'm barely a scientist—a philosopher, maybe. It is not my job to create anything. It is my job to wonder if it might be done, so that someone else might do it."

Arthur pulled out a binder from his bag at his feet and flipped it open on the desk: pages and pages of formulas, excerpts from pharmacology journals, tangential pharmacodynamics trial findings. Everything Arthur had spent the last year compiling, any spare moment he got. It was a veritable instruction manual for bringing Dr. Charles's work out of the theoretical and into the lab. The professor looked at Arthur as though he was seeing him for the first time. It wasn't the approval of his curiosity Arthur expected. It was more reticent, distrustful almost. 

"I believe I've been underestimating you, Mr. Darling." 

It was late when Arthur finally left the clinic, feeling shaky from too much tea, too much adrenaline, the climb and the drop—not unlike a rollercoaster—of losing himself in work, in ideas. He had been showing off, he knew; and posturing carried risks, but he'd been swept up in the intoxication of possibility, and he couldn't help it. Arthur had talked Dr. Charles through everything, as best he could in one long afternoon, and when they were finished—when their ideas had stopped ricocheting off one another's and the dust had settled—Arthur finally believed: he could do this. This technology was possible. And maybe his brain didn't dream like it was supposed to, but damn if it still wasn't impressive as hell. 

He hitched up his bag and set off in search of a pub, a corner table all to himself and whatever was on tap. Someplace generic and unfamiliar, only half-heartedly committed to the holiday spirit. He found just the place, bizarrely in the center of town, one he'd walked past dozens of times and never gone in. It was almost quiet inside, despite the prime hour, with just a handful of stragglers who were still stuck in town. The proprietor had propped up a meager, two-foot tree on the bar with three dull baubles, and considered his commitment to Christmas cheer fulfilled. 

Arthur ordered a drink with the coins in his pocket and collapsed into a chair. He meant to take out his notebook, go through it again and again, keep his mind _focused._ Distracted. But he was exhausted. Finally, he was just _exhausted_ , and he couldn't anymore. He swallowed a mouthful of warm beer and leaned on the table, propped up on his elbows. With heavy eyes he watched the others in the pub go about their evening: two girls at the next table had flipped closed a text on Hobbes and were discussing Coronation Street instead. An older gentleman sat at the bar watching highlights from the Tottenham match. 

There were two boys tucked away in the corner close by. Arthur tried not to watch them, but it took effort not to, and eventually it wasn't worth it. He stared unabashedly. They didn't notice. Each's attention was held solely by the other. They shared open mouth smiles and bright eyes, and there was nothing reserved about it. They were affectionate and there was no fear in it, no hesitation, no doubt. They tried each other's drinks, made faces, blushed. Their fingers tangled together in the center of the small table, and their feet beneath it, and their sweet laughter could just be heard above the football commentary. One of the boys leaned down and dug out a small wrapped box from the bag at his feet and presented it to the other. The other boy kissed him silly before he even thought to open the gift, and Arthur's stomach gave a lurch. 

That should've been them. Him and Eames. _It should've been them._ But Eames had to go and spoil everything by not loving Arthur at all, even though his face so many times had said differently. Even though he had touched Arthur with such care, and looked at him so unguardedly that Arthur _couldn't_ _believe_ , even now, that it was fake, that all of it was a lie. Arthur had fit himself against Eames with such reticence, and then it had felt _so right._ It had felt so easy to  lay there, together, to feel Eames's warm heart beating under his ear, his head pillowed on Eames's chest, wrapped up in each other. Eames had looked at Arthur and told him he saw something beautiful, and Arthur so wanted to believe it, wanted to believe that there was anything left in him that was good and simple and still worthy—something soft, something beside his sharp mind, his painful intellect—that he'd let himself. He'd believed Eames, and he'd let himself love him, and it _hurt._ It all hurt so fucking much, and Arthur had been trying not to think about it—that was easier, surely—but now that he'd started he wasn't sure how to stop. A maudlin, syrup-slow evening. He deserved it. 

Arthur had loved Eames, and this is what he'd gotten for his trouble: a bruised up heart, a battered ego, sitting alone at Christmastime, drinking cheap beer. He finished his pint. Not even a good fuck, he thought, letting the empty glass hit the table with a thud. He hadn't even gotten that. He ordered another. And then another after that. 

Later, tumbled back out into the night, his body heavy and warm, Arthur startled at a jostled roar echoing down the street. He stood to the far side of the pavement, in the shadows of buildings that offered him no real escape, listening to the noise turning up… up. A Jaguar tore into view a few seconds later, sleek, top down, poorly manned. It swerved, crossed lazily into the opposite lane, jogged back. Headlights danced a drunken jig, flashing across the road, and for one brief second, Arthur. He threw up a sleeve to cover his eyes from the glare. The car jerked sharply, righted itself on the road, and barreled past. A bottle shattered at his feet as it went, a chorus of youthful bacchanalian hoots rising above the mechanized growl, lingering after. Arthur recognized the label: Chateau Mouton-Rothschild. Arthur had only ever seen it once before in his life: in Eames's room. A $10,000 bottle of wine tossed half-empty from a car window. It left a bloody puddle on the cobblestones. Arthur had only glanced their faces, briefly and through the spots that floated in his vision, but he knew…

The car stopped a few feet away, relinquishing a body to the road, puking and shuttering. Others got out and the group laughed around the collapsed, drunken figure. Arthur thought: _Eames_ and his stomach clenched, but what right did he have to be concerned now? It wasn't his place. 

Alistair stepped out of the driver's side, barely glancing at the body on the pavement. His eyes were for Arthur, his face done up in a  wan , snake-like smile. He approached with cool, measured steps. The other boys got the idea and abandoned their fascination with— _not Eames_ ; one of the boys half-heartedly kicked the slack body onto its side and Arthur caught a glance of his pale face, grimacing and gasping. It wasn't Eames. Arthur wasn't sure he even recognized him; he was young, graceless next to his stewards. A new plaything, maybe. 

"Mr. Darling," Alistair cooed. "My Mr. Darling." He strode through the deep, wintery shadows and the blades of streetlamp light that cut through them, stopping so close that Arthur could feel the boy's damp, warm breath hovering between them.

Arthur was silent.

Alistair tsk'd, looked disappointed. "And after we showed you such generosity." 

"I suspect you want me to bow? Kiss your rings?"

" _Well,_ such gestures wouldn't go amiss… But just now we'll settle for a little cooperation."

"Why _on earth_ would I _ever—_ "

"Where's Eames?"

"I—what? How the hell would I know?" 

Alistair rolled his eyes and blew out another huff of breath, looking bored. "Arthur. It wasn't _personal_." 

Arthur closed his hands into fists at his side and smiled cruelly. "Wasn't personal…" he said on a laugh, stepping back to get some weight behind him, his shoulder dropping, his fist clenched… 

Suddenly he was seized from behind by one of Alistair's lackeys, a stocky walrus of a boy who breathed heavy and sour at Arthur's ear. He caught both of Arthur's  wrists in one hand and gave his arms a warning tug. 

"Americans—god, you're all so brash," Alistair said. He kept his own hands buried neatly in his coat pockets and looked at Arthur with his small, pretty eyes, cutting in their disinterest. "I'll ask again, shall I? Where's Eames?"

"Fuck you," Arthur said. The boy at his back tugged again, hard, and Arthur felt it in his shoulder socket. "Christ," he muttered. "Get off of me." 

Arthur knocked his head backward, hitting his skull against the boy's nose so that he gave a yelp and stumbled back, letting loose Arthur's wrists. Arthur immediately moved away, put his back against a wall and planted his feet. His eyes darted from one doughy, amused face to the next. Arthur was outnumbered, but none of them exactly looked like they'd ever been in a fight—nothing more than a punch thrown on the schoolyard, anyway—and he wasn't scared. Not anymore. He wouldn't let himself be scared of these  anemic, wretched  boys ever again. 

"I'm surprised you'd protect Eames," Alistair said, keeping his distance. 

"I'm not protecting him."

"Then tell us where he is."

"I don't know!" Arthur cried. "Why the hell would I know?"

Alistair looked at him curiously, and Arthur wanted to stop himself from saying another word, but it bubbled out, obvious and painful:

"Why would I ever want to see him again, after all of that?"  Warily he felt his body slump with the admission, like a marionette with cut strings. He just wanted to get away. He wanted to never see these people again. 

"You managed to make Eames _boring_ ," Alistair finally said. " _How?_ "

Arthur laughed. "I didn't do anything."

"That doesn't exactly appear to be the case."

"Whatever Eames is—it's his own damn fault. I was just—like you said, I was just a game."

Alistair watched him for a long moment.

"If you see him, tell him we're looking for him, yeah?"

"What do you want with him?" Arthur asked reluctantly. 

"It seems that's really no concern of yours." Alistair gestured lazily back to the Jag. "Come on, boys. Let's keep looking." 

Arthur watched the gang fit themselves back into the car and peel away back down the quiet, empty street. A light went on in a building across the way, a square of dull, golden light; Arthur watched curtains be pulled aside, the flash of a face looking out at the noise, small and frowning. Then they were gone, and Arthur was alone, and his adrenaline was ebbing away, leaving in its dirty wake a sluggish, drunken feeling that was only partially from the beer.

Eames was… where was he? Arthur didn't know. Why had Alistair thought he would know? The long break had started and surely Eames was meant to be on his way to… wherever the others were going. Aspen, hadn't they said? Courchevel, St Moritz? Had Eames ever said for sure what his plans were? Maybe Arthur had just assumed: some ski resort too rich for his blood. 

Arthur didn't know where Eames was, but  the last time he'd seen him, he'd looked in no state for skiing. Even through the haze of hurt and betrayal, Arthur remembered: Eames hadn't looked well at all. And now his friends were scraping the very bottom of the barrel looking for him, if they'd thought to go to Arthur for a lead. 

Dammit, he was just trying to _forget_. He was just trying to lick his wounds in peace and _move on_. Arthur fancied he wasn't the sort to be ridiculous and overwrought about things. You soldiered through life, that was what you did, no matter what. But his stomach was churning now, bile and anger and a hint of reluctant concern, images of Eames passed out in a ditch somewhere to dry out. _He deserves it_ , Arthur wanted to think, but mostly he thought: _It's so cold. No one deserves that._ What an idiot, to go missing in December. The grass in the college quads was icy, it crunched when you tiptoed across it, mindful of tattletales and lingering fellows and pleadingly polite signage ("Please keep off the grass"). 

Arthur headed across town towards St. John's. It was too obvious, maybe, but it was a place to start at least. Maybe Arthur would  find half  Eames's closest cleaned out and some missing luggage and he could rest assured Eames had fled somewhere else , that he was probably well enough and tucked up in a train with tea service. 

He knocked: twice, swift, knuckles on wood. He waited. He tried again, more aggressively, with the side of his fist. The noise echoed down the hall in either direction, an ominous groan. 

The door next to Eames's swung open and a  freckled , exasperated face peeked out. "Christ, will you guys just leave him alone already," she said, adjusting her glasses so she could frown more clearly at Arthur. 

"Excuse me?"

"Just let up, okay? Seriously. I don't know what he did, but coming 'round and banging on his door at all hours—he's not the only  one  on this floor, you know. Some of us covet our sleeping hours." 

Arthur glanced briefly at his watch: it wasn't so late, but it wasn't exacting visiting hours. He looked back at the girl, with her sloppy hair and blinking eyes, an over-large t-shirt swamping her slight frame: it was white and covered with sharpie'd signatures, brief messages of fondness and love. He'd seen other students wear shirts like them, emblazoned with "Leavers" on the back, then the year. She was a fresher probably, perpetually on-edge and lulled by the memory of her school days, when A-Levels had seemed the worst stress in the world. 

The girl sighed and rubbed at her eyes,  pushing her glasses askew,  and Arthur wanted to apologize and bundle her back  to bed, tell her _Yes, please, rest._ It was so stupid what they did, to run themselves on empty, wearing out the bright parts of themselves. Arthur felt dull inside, gunked up. 

He sighed and shook himself to attention. "But he's in there?" he asked. 

"What?"

"Eames. You've seen him?" 

"Who's Eames?"

"The boy who lives here. Have you seen him around lately?"

She looked nervous all of a sudden, tucking more of her body away inside the doorway. "Listen, I don't want to get involved in anything—"

"It's not—it's nothing. It's not 'getting involved', I just want to know if he's been around. I just need to make sure he's okay." 

She snorted and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, you guys sounded real concerned the other night." 

"I'm sorry, I don't—"

"I said I don't want to be involved, okay?" she said, insistent this time. Before Arthur could protest, she slipped back inside and slammed her door with a grumbled note of finality. 

_Right_. So he wasn't the only one to come poking around. This had probably been the first place his friends had looked, too. Obvious. And if Eames wouldn't open up for them, he wasn't going to open up for Arthur. He was gone, as suspected, disappeared into thin air apparently. But there had to be something.

Arthur checked the hallway in both directions before he crouched down in front of the door. He didn't have much on him, certainly not the kind of kit Eames made a habit of toting around for reasons Arthur didn't quite get—or didn't want to. But he had a pen in his pocket, and a paperclip, and he thought he could make do. 

Eames had taught him, after all, exactly what to do. On a rainy day in November, when Arthur had been cranky and vaguely combative, and had asked Eames about The University Church of St. Mary the Virgin. If he did that often, picked his way into locked spaces. 

"A guy's gotta eat," Eames had said. 

"I'm serious," Arthur had said, kicking his feet out at Eames, stretched out on his ridiculous leather couch, like a surely, ill-rested child. 

"So am I." Eames had grabbed one of Arthur's ankles and stroked the delicate skin stretched over bone, the taut tendons. He'd pressed at his insole and grinned as Arthur melted. "I could show you," he'd said. 

"I suppose it's 'all in the wrist'?"

"Most great things are," he'd said with a wink. 

So Eames had showed him the weakness of university locks. He'd made swift work of his own, and Arthur's, after Eames had dragged him all the way back to Magdalen to prove his own brilliance. And Arthur was a quick study. "A very useful skill to have, Darling," Eames insisted. He had grabbed Arthur's wrist, his blunt fingers prodding at his pulse point, and he'd eased Arthur's hand this way and that, a  careful series of controlled movements.

Arthur went to work on Eames's door, his ear pressed close to listen to the rhythm of pins falling and releasing. His tools were clumsy, his hands awkward and dumb with  drink , and it took Arthur a minute to remember the pattern he was listening for, but suddenly… he got it. The lock released and Arthur pushed the door open, still on his knees. 

A lamp was on deep in the front room, a single bulb lighting and shadowing the place in Pollock-like throws of color. He pulled himself to his feet on the door handle and stepped inside. On the other side of the threshold Arthur startled: the place was a wreck. Couch cushions were torn open, their stuffing trailing off into the next room. The curtains had been pulled down and the painting over the fireplace had been slashed, a fierce cut through the delicate face of a not-so handsome man. He ventured further into the room. Shattered liquor bottles, fine shoes cut to pieces. Arthur caught a rank smell of musk and urine, and scrunched up his nose at a damp pile of clothing; a halo of dark liquid had spread around it, seeping into the floor. 

Arthur listened for—anything. A body shifting. Some memory of the cacophony that must've accompanied such a scene. But the room stayed quiet, held onto its secrets a while longer. Arthur felt both stunningly sober and much too drunk to make sense of it. 

"Eames?" 

Nothing. 

Arthur moved toward the dark bedroom and spoke louder, "Eames?" 

Then the rustling of sheets, a groan in the pitch black. Arthur fumbled in memory for the light switch and hit it. The room flooded a harsh, florescent blue-white. 

"Fuck!" Eames said, turning away from the door to bury his face in his pillow. "Fuck," he mumbled again. "Leave me alone!"

Arthur frowned down at Eames's body, which was tangled up in his duvet with haphazard patches of bare skin peeking through, familiar in flashes to Arthur from what felt like a lifetime ago. "Yeah well fuck you, too," he said.

"Arthur?" Eames turned back over and squinted up at him. "Oh god, darling." Eames scrambled toward him across the mattress, twisting himself up more. He tripped over the edge and collapsed at Arthur's feet, a mess of naked body and gnarled cotton sheets. 

Arthur took a step back, his hands out. 

"Christ," he said. "What happened?" 

"You're here," Eames said, blinking at him in astonishment.

"What did you do to your front room? End of term bender?" 

"What?" Then Eames seemed to remember, and flushed. "Oh, that." 

"Yeah, that." Arthur toed at a stained Oxford crumpled on the floor.

"One day I'd really love for them to realize I nicked most of that stuff off of them in the first place," Eames muttered. "But sadly they have so much shit, I doubt they ever will." 

Arthur leaned against the wall, his arms folded across his chest, uninterested. 

"I didn't think you 'd ever want to see me again," Eames said after a moment. 

Arthur raised a sardonic eyebrow. 

"You're here," Eames explained. " I didn't think…"

"Yeah, well. Guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks." 

Arthur moved away with all the grace his heavy limbs could manage. At the window, which showed him only his own pale reflection half-formed against the sea black quad, he paused, his hands on his hips. The smell from the front room was here, too—the animal musk, the sweet sharp bite of fine whiskey. It was making Arthur's stomach churn, and he unlatched the glass panes and shoved them open. A rush of fresh, icy air  swept into the room, and Arthur stepped aside so that it might hit Eames squarely in his bare chest. 

"Arthur," Eames began. 

Arthur kept his back to him and said blithely, meanly, "Go talk to your fucking friends, okay? So they stop harassing me." 

"They were harassing you?"

"Accosting me on darkened street corners. You know. Real casual like."

"Oh god. Christ. Arthur, I'm sorry—"

" _That's_ what you're sorry for?" Arthur choked back a mildly hysterical laugh and turned to face Eames. "Of all the _fucking shit_ … No, you're sorry for _that_.  You're a fucking asshole, Eames." 

"I know." Eames looked down at his hands. "I wanted to say—I tried to, when  I saw you with—you know. Your friends. I was going to say—but I didn't think you'd really want to hear it." 

"You're a fucking coward then , as well ."

"That I am," Eames said, each word sounding punched from his lungs, resigned. 

Arthur watched Eames shiver, goosebumps spreading across his exposed skin, and Arthur thought: _good_. 

Arthur nodded and started for the door , having satisfied the foolish part of him that needed to see, against all logic, Eames safe. "Just call off your fucking hounds, okay?"

"Please don't go," Eames whispered. "Please stay." He slowly opened his eyes and looked up at Arthur. Arthur paused and looked back, the overhead light sharpening the whites and the cool blue grey of Eames's bewildered stare.

"I don't like you very much, Eames. And you don't like me at all," Arthur said.

"That's not true." 

Arthur laughed. "Yeah, it is." It was easier that way. _Would be easier,_ going forward, to forget about this thing with Eames if he was convinced the entire thing had been a shame, and Eames along with it—an actor playing a part, too smart for his own good and cruel enough not to care. 

"You said you loved me," said Eames.

"Maybe you're not the only one who can lie." 

"Don't say that." Eames's tone was still quiet, but there was a sternness to it now. Something frantic. "Please."

Arthur fell back against the wall, which was faintly yellow from decades of tobacco, careless boys and their nervous habits. He felt cold down to his dense, hollow bones. He could hear Eames breathing. It was labored, unhappy. It sounded like a mean breeze, something that might shatter the open window. Or maybe it was Arthur, that noise. The wheeze, keening. His chest suddenly felt too tight, his lungs small, and he hated Eames anew for still playing this—this _game_. For still turning his watery blue eyes on Arthur, for pleading, silently, for Arthur to understand. Like there was anything for him to understand. Like there was any reason for them to be continuing on like this, like there was anything to save between. 

"Darling—"

"—Don't." Arthur's voice was grim. 

"Arthur. I am sorry. _I am so sorry._ " 

Arthur shook his head, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. "Doesn't matter."

"Don't tell me it doesn't matter. It's the _only thing that matters._ Please, Arthur. Please, just—" Eames paused to inhale shakily, stealing himself. He reached for Arthur. "I can explain. Let me—I need to tell you. I need to explain why—" 

Arthur shook him off and stumbled back. "Shut up, Eames. Please. Just. I need you to—shut up." 

Whatever hopefulness there'd been in Eames's eager, apologetic face , it stuttered then and went out, leaving his body collapsible. A flame extinguished by Arthur's refusal hear evidence. Arthur could've laughed, watching it, and he wondered if something had snapped in him, finally. 

Arthur sank to the floor, feeling the scrape of the wall at his back as he went. There was something like surrender in this—this not leaving—but the distance between him and Eames made him feel safe for a moment longer. The stretch of sticky student carpet, Eames still tied up awkwardly in his sheets on the floor opposite, unable to chase after Arthur. At this level, Arthur could see a familiar uncorked bottle of wine peeking out from under Eames's bed. The 1982 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild. Feeling cruel and off-kilter, Arthur reached for it. 

"You people are _the worst_ ," he muttered, cradling the bottle in one hand, referent. "Do you even—you've got this stuck under your bed with your fucking, I don't know, gym socks or whatever. Did you even remember you have it?" 

Eames scratched the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable. "I knew it was there." 

"You—Christ. I bet you know the worth of everything and the value of nothing, isn't that what they say? I mean, what's a few grand to you? It's not like you saved up your pennies to buy this. Did you even buy this? Maybe Santa left it in your Christmas stocking one year, for being such a good boy." Arthur remembered the bottle Eames's friends had left rolling at his feet, smashed up on the pavement like something gruesome, ugly. Shards of glass, blood filling in the cracks in the asphalt. 

"Or maybe this is just how you care for nice things," Arthur said, quieter. 

"That's not— _Arthur_." 

"What does that kind of carelessness taste like, I wonder?"

"Arthur. Don't," Eames said, suddenly very alert. So this is what it took to shake him, Arthur thought  ungenerously : touch  something truly precious of his. 

A weird kind of giddiness settled over Arthur and he sprung to his feet. Eames reached for him, but Arthur stepped away, easily, his eyes scanning the mess of books and laundry for a corkscrew. He was positive Eames had one somewhere. He finally caught a glint of silver lolling in a gold-rimmed shot glass atop Eames's dresser, and he reached for it, plunged it into the cork with the ease of a lifetime of doing so. It released with a satisfying hiss, and Arthur grinned at Eames's horrified face right before he took a swig straight from the bottle. Arthur thought his mother, too, would be horrified. _Manners, Arthur!_ But then again, she always did think it was ridiculous  people locked away their very best wine, the bottles they were most meant to enjoy. So maybe she'd be a little proud of him, as well. 

As soon as the wine hit his throat, Arthur coughed and spit it back out, staining Eames's crisp white sheets with a glorious spray of Bordeaux. Eames flinched, catching a bit of the spray. He rubbed the back of his hand across his face, grimacing.

"This is _shit,"_ Arthur said. He looked at the label in disbelief, then to Eames.

Eames's eyes went wide in panic, and his mouth sputtered ineffectually for a second. He watched, as if in pain, Arthur take another small sip of the wine, his lips curling around the bottle in a mean smirk. He held the wine on his tongue, let the spoiled taste of something  thoughtless and synthetic sit in his mouth, his eyes narrowed at Eames. 

Arthur swallowed it down and bared his teeth,  imaging them greyed faintly by the wine. "Absolute shit," he said. 

Eames slumped forward. "Yeah." 

"There's no way this is Chateau Mouton-Rothschild." 

Eames nodded. "No," he whispered, and then in a voice somehow smaller said, "I can explain. Please just let me." 

Arthur thought about beautiful things, fine things. Thought about how no one talked about the sweat and grime that went into them, and the greed. How some people would buy anything for the label, the idea, never minding how rotten it was at its core. False. Full of sawdust. Everything in a name, and in name only. Arthur dropped the bottle to the floor and smirked. An ugly gush of wine poured from the mouth onto Eames's beige carpet, and kept pouring. A pool, almost black, spreading out from Arthur, perfuming the room with the stench of a cheap and pretty lie, ruining everything. 

"Please—" Eames tried again, but Arthur stopped him. Arthur stopped him by surging forward, wrapping a hand in the coarse hair at the back of Eames's head, and pulling their mouths together. It was violent, lips and teeth and a sweep of metallic on both their tongues. 

Eames groaned, and when Arthur pulled away to steal air back into his lungs, he saw Eames's  eyes , lids drooping over the black pearl of his  blown pupils . Blitzed. He blinked once, slowly, and then began doing so in earnest, like he expected Arthur to disappear in each tiny moment of blindness. His mouth was open, stunned. 

"Arthur, I—"

"No talking." 

Arthur clenched his shaking hands into fists at his side and leaned into Eames again, a fumble that put his mouth against Eames's in another vaguely violent crush. Arthur bit down, teeth to lip, and ignored the whimper that drifted up from Eames's throat. Eames pressed closer, and hesitantly spread his hands wide across Arthur's chest—not pushing, but steadying himself, feeling the solid weight that was Arthur, warm against him —and Arthur met that pressure, slipping his fists around Eames's waist to push at the small of his back, forcing them closer. 

This time Eames broke away. The kiss was messy,  a taste of blood , and the open air stung their  chaffed  lips. The throb, Arthur thought, was good. It focused him, a curious sting and was not pleasure, not exactly, and so helped. Eames looked away from him and drew in a shaky breath, shallow and loud. 

He looked back after a long few seconds, his eyes just barely meeting Arthur's before dropping to the few inches of space between their bodies. Eames reached out slowly, trailed his hand up Arthur's arm, across his clavicle, up his neck, his fingers stuttering and dragging against Arthur's skin, leaving tracks Arthur could _feel_ , could memorize. He thought of lying in bed alone, some night far and away from this one, running his own inadequate fingers along these same invisible grooves, and already he knew it would never be enough. Eames's hand came to rest on Arthur's jaw, the tips of his fingers brushing his ear, the wisps of hair just behind. He pressed his thumb to the smooth skin of Arthur's cheek and pursed his lips at the lack of a dimple there, maybe. His face looked wistful to Arthur, lust and sadness, tinged with hope. 

Maybe this was what Eames thought absolution looked like. Arthur kept his face blank and said nothing.

Eames leaned forward and kissed Arthur gently, lovingly. His plump lips worked against Arthur's in patient, intoxicating strokes, his tongue tracing the seam, slipping in on a gasp, shared groans. Closer, Eames knocking his hips against Arthur's. He ran one hand around to the base of Arthur's skull to hold him still while the other fell to the front of Arthur's trousers, his fingers hooked over the waistband, resting on the button above his fly. 

"Say yes," Eames murmured against Arthur's lips. "Oh,love. Say yes, say—"

"Yeah, Eames. Yeah." 

Eames quickly freed himself from the tangle sheet, exposing his pale, muscled chest. Arthur grabbed a hold of Eames's hand and guided his palm back to press against the hard heat of him. Eames leaned forward to rest his forehead against Arthur's clavicle, sucking in wrecked inhales of air as he touched him there at last, through layers still of clothing. Arthur reached down and unbuttoned his own trousers, unzipping them while Eames watched. He tugged them down, just an inch, revealing himself, and Eames growled something possessive. He pulled away to spit in his palm and then he was on Arthur again, working his hand around the length of him, his fingers tugging and massaging at the head. His other hand settled on Arthur's hip, steadying them both. The sound of Arthur's ragged breathing filled the room, the smell of him and bad wine mingling grossly. 

"Gorgeous," Eames murmured. 

Arthur shook his head. _No talking._

Eames nodded curtly, and tried to hide the shuttered look by ducking his head. His hand disappeared for a moment and Arthur involuntarily keened at the loss. Hot, exposed, abandoned— 

But Eames was rearranging himself, pushing Arthur's shoulder to get him to lie back. Arthur complied, leaning back on his elbows, and blinked owlishly as Eames hovered over him for a moment. Grinning something near bashful, Eames slowly lowered his head to take Arthur into his mouth, in deep, deep, until he was punching at Eames's soft palate with every small thrust. Arthur threaded his fingers into the hair at the back of Eames head and let them rest there while noises dripped from his slack mouth—moans, pleas. Interrupted hiccups of breath. The heat of Eames's mouth, the delightful dexterity of his tongue, the careful scrap of his teeth… Arthur felt a pressure building in him. He moved his hand to Eames's hollowed cheek and slowly tried to guide him back up. Eames looked at him, his dark eyes intent, and with a small shake of his head he sucked, purposefully, and Arthur was undone. 

He collapsed on the mattress and let out a final, shuddering breath when Eames dragged his mouth off of him, carefully, kindly. Blissed and momentarily dopey, Arthur  dropped his head to the side and saw Eames swallow. Arthur smiled at him, an involuntary twitch, and Eames smiled back—small, hesitant . Arthur thought about how sweet this felt, for the few seconds before everything he was forgetting rushed back to him. 

Before it could show on his face as something dark and hateful, Arthur pushed himself back up and reached for Eames, a hand on his neck, bringing their lips together. He could taste himself on  Eames's tongue and he hated it. It was wrong, bitter. But he kept them like that, lips lazily pressing, sucking, because when they were kissing, Arthur didn't have to look at Eames. 

Arthur sank his hands into Eames's pajamas bottoms and found his cock, hard and desperately warm, already slick. Eames's breath hitched as Arthur worked him quickly, a bit too roughly, sloppily. 

"Darling, darling—" 

And then Eames was pulling away from the kiss, dropping his head to Arthur's shoulder to groan. His release was hot in Arthur's hand. 

Arthur withdrew his hand from Eames's pants and wiped his palm on the sheets a distance away from him. The clamor of their breathing filled the small space. When Eames raised his head from Arthur's shoulder he was smiling, baring his crooked teeth where his lips cracked apart, blissful and exhausted. He laughed, even, on a small exhale of air, and reached for Arthur, pulling his face close for a kiss. 

But Arthur pulled away. 

Eames's face fell, confused. "Arthur?"

Arthur looked at Eames and thought about how real he looked just then. Like he was a real boy, almost. His face so open, maybe capable of honesty—some brief flash of it, here, with his guard down. And Arthur thought about how you could make things real if you believed them badly enough. You could give things value, even gross, terrible things, just by believing they  had value. Make things good by believing them to be good. The smell of wine was still heavy around them, and the smell of Eames. 

Arthur moved away in swift, jerky movements. He tucked himself  back into his pants , zipped up his jeans, started for the door. Eames sat frozen in the middle  his pool of dirtied sheets. 

Arthur paused in the doorway and didn't look at Eames when he said, "I wanted to make an honest man out of you."

And then he left. 


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An explanation, too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... Well that took longer than expected. If anyone's still with me, hat's off to you. I'm still struggling along with this one. I suspect I have one more chapter in me (and possibly a tiny epilogue). A million bisous for Kedgeree for the beta and just generally making me feel like I still have it in me to finish this damn story.  <3

Afterward, the sick feeling in Arthur’s stomach wouldn’t go away. 

He set himself up in Magdalen’s library to try and distract himself, but he wasted more of the day staring out the long slatted windows than at his books. It stormed, a proper icy deluge that soaked the city grey and made a ghost town of the streets, shops closed up early or never opened at all, buses crawling through town with barely a passenger to call their own; from the library window Arthur saw one go past, met the dull eyes of someone with nowhere to go, nowhere to be, their mournful face resting against the window and leaving a warm smear on the glass. 

The hours drained away. There was no one else, no one to find him, and he didn’t speak all day. The sky dimmed to a smokey dark by three, four p.m., and Arthur missed California with a keenness he rarely allowed himself. He had decided quickly, the very first time he felt it, that homesickness would never do him any good, but suddenly it felt impossible to not long for the sun and a patch of warm, soft earth to curl up on until his mother found him and carried him in for dinner. Where the wet sandstone buildings of Oxford framed lush, kelly green lawns—if Arthur stared long enough, and let his eyes blur them, the swatches of gold and green weren’t so unlike the endless, undulating vineyards of his boyhood. But they had none of their warmth and more cruelty than Arthur ever would’ve imagined, and as they came back into focus, Arthur felt sick all over again.

Eames had deserved it. He’d _earned_ it, like a knife to the gut, twisted by Arthur’s slick hand. His lot: they put stock in acts of humiliation, dealt in moments of indifferent savagery, and so Eames would recognize it for what it was, and maybe even he’d respect Arthur for it, in his own way. Maybe now he’d come to think that Arthur wasn’t so hopelessly weak as he thought, some gullible and pathetic plaything. And Arthur had been a cruel teacher, he would not feel guilty, because it was still nothing— _nothing_ —compared to what Eames had done.

But also, maybe, Arthur was overestimating his own worth. Probably Eames was fine. He’d gotten what he wanted, after all—a _nice little fuck_ , wasn’t that what this all came down to?—and now he could go back to his friends with his head held high. Because obviously they were a bunch that valued _honesty_. Arthur practically snarled as he even thought the word. 

Arthur shuddered as his mind spun out; he had never been this person before: so cynical, so purposefully cruel. What had Eames done to him? 

Arthur put his books away. He turned from the window, retreated. 

A postcard from Dom arrived a few days later. The front was a whitewashed scene of soft, shallow mountains, a basin peppered with log cabins; the back: two sentences in Dom’s pin-neat handwriting to let him know they’d made it to Serre Chevalier, and there was snow. Arthur wore soft the corners of the postcard handling it, smiling gently and sadly, before tacking it to the bulletin board near his desk, where books were piling up unread, cups of tea gone cold. Arthur could feel a gnawing in his stomach and he didn’t know where to start in the attribution: a residual anger, guilt, feeling foolish for feeling guilty, and just plain old loneliness. 

But then a letter from Mal arrived, a day later and three pages long—her looping script, a poetess in verse—and Arthur smiled into his porridge as he savored each word. By the last paragraph she had insisted Arthur join them—said there was a train ticket with his name on it waiting for him at the station, because neither Mal, nor Dom, nor _Miles_ would hear of Arthur spending the holidays alone. There was still a draft in the empty, rummaged-low kitchen, in the damp hallways and his quiet room, but Arthur felt warm for the first time in days.

Arthur needed a few things for the trip: a warmer jacket, some new gloves, toothpaste. It was wet still, and incessantly grey, but Arthur was motivated now to go out in a way he hadn’t been in days. The bags under his eyes weren’t so grave, he thought, and he could force a smile and a few mundane words about the weather with a shopgirl if he needed to, so he ventured out into the city with a list. 

He was shifting through a rack of heavy wool peacoats when he spotted a familiar face. He couldn’t recall her name—he’d blocked out so much of that night—but he knew her, knew her wide blue eyes and how they looked when she was startled, aghast. The waitress from the pub that night, plain and kindly looking as ever. 

As though she could feel Arthur gaping at her, she looked up from the bin of knit hats she was parceling through and caught his eye. She blushed, grimaced, and turned back toward the door, her hands shoved in her pockets.

“Wait!” Arthur said, lurching towards her.

“Please,” she said, side-stepping him. She knew him: obviously she did. How could that night not stand out in her mind as well, in an entirely different way. Eames and his friends had destroyed that dining room. There’d been smashed up porcelain dishes and whiskey bottles, wine staining the rugs, the tapestries. Like a hurricane had torn through the place and left only a memory of far gone good times in its wake.

“I wanted to apologize,” Arthur said hurriedly. He didn’t want to reach for her, grab her. She’d felt violated enough, he figured. But he had to say it, selfishly. He needed to apologize to someone for now the night had progressed, even if it wasn’t his fault. The night needed apologizing for. 

She paused and blinked at him. “You’ve nothing to apologize for,” she said.

“What happened, it was inexcusable—“

“Yeah,” she said. “Real inexcusable.” She looked away and Arthur thought maybe there was pity in her eyes, the small downward turn of her pink mouth—not for herself and what she’d been forced to deal with that night, but for him. She couldn’t have known the extent of what had happened, but she’d seen him flee the scene, ill-dressed and shaking. So maybe she had some idea. 

Arthur was quiet for a moment before he thought to ask, “How is the place? Were you able to… set any of it right?” 

She nodded. “They gave us money for everything, before they left. Didn’t know there were people on this earth that carried cash in their pockets like that.”

Arthur couldn’t help but frown. Of course they’d paid the restaurant off—how else could their little tradition continue? The arrogance of money, the senselessness of it all. 

“And then the one came back that next day,” she added.

“For what?”

“To help put things to rights. He came back and helped us sort it.” 

“Who did?”

“Oh… I’m not sure I remember his name. Something posh, I guess.”

Because that narrowed it down.

“Eames?” Arthur dared.

“Yeah, I think that was it. Like the designer. Yeah. He came ‘round on his own. Was real quiet, embarrassed I guess. But it was nice of him—I mean, fucking terrible thing they’d done in the first place, but him coming back was more than we’d have ever expected. Surprisingly good with a broom, that one. Figured those boys had never cleaned a day in their lives.”

Arthur swallowed thickly and nodded, not understanding why his eyes insisted on prickling suddenly. Eames was terrible. Eames had done a terrible thing. The fact that he’d tried to make amends didn’t absolve him of that, not to Arthur. 

Especially because the amends hadn’t been for him; Eames hadn’t come around the next day with a broom to try and sweep up the shattered bits of Arthur lying on the floor. The absolution hadn’t come. 

The girl—Angharad, Arthur suddenly remembered—rocked awkwardly for a moment. “Well. Bye, then,” she said. She ducked her head and hurried off, slipping out the door and onto the street. Arthur’s Arthur’s eyes didn’t follow her past that, and he didn’t dare look at her face, lest he see that look again. 

The next day Arthur caught the train into London, jumped on the Eurostar to Paris and a clambering old TGV train into Lyon, and finally a bus to the resort. He was sad to know Paris only as a train station, as a blurred horizon of grey and graffitied buildings out a moving window, and to miss the famed French countryside in the dimming light of an early evening train in late December, but he could accept it; he’d had worst kinds of sadness in his life. 

He wore the scarf Mal and Dom had given him, and three layers under his coat, which felt loose on his frame these days, and still much too thin for the Alps. Snow soaked his boots.

But none of it mattered when he stepped off the bus and into the arms of the people who had asked him along, not with looks of pity on their faces, but with wide, contagious smiles; bodies still warm from the fire, from hot chocolate and an afternoon of blissful laziness. Arthur was promptly bundled up into the family car and driven back to the house. He saw little of the city in the dark, just a parade of fairy lights catching against the glass of the backseat window, and he drifted asleep against Mal’s shoulder, thinking how much it all felt like a dream. 

The days went quickly after that. Late mornings of coffee and eggs and pastries, afternoons sprawled across some piece of furniture in the living room, Dom nearby, Mal with her feet in his lap. Miles listened to the radio, to news, and the small house was filled with a low-level murmur of warbling French that Arthur couldn’t understand. He gave himself permission not to think too much and read a translation of the Count of Monte Cristo for long, uninterrupted hours. Mal drew in her sketchbook or read heavy tomes of art history, or French Vogue in the evenings when they were exhausted from doing nothing much. Dom caught up on his subscription to The Economist before moving onto Miles’s collection of architecture books, puzzling over their schematics, drawings, huge buildings brought into existence from someone’s head, their hand against a draft table. 

Miles came in with afternoon coffees for them with a small plate of cookies and noticed Dom’s reading. “You know,” he said to him, “I’m transferring back to Paris next year. To teach. I wanted to wait until Mallory had graduated. But you could come, both of you, when you’re done. Get the degree you should be getting.”

Arthur was on the other side of the room, folded into the chair closest to the fire, his hair wispy and curling, and he watched Dom’s face change from its usual mask of impassivity to something suddenly more keen. Arthur knew Dom had done an undergraduate degree in architecture, that he’d felt absolutely wrecked by it and had desperately fished around for something else when he applied for his scholarship, but maybe that spark in him wasn’t yet completed extinguished. In the days following, Arthur found scraps of drawings left on tables or tucked into the couch cushions—rough sketches, weird amalgamations of things Arthur almost recognized but not quite. Mal found them, too, and took to sprucing them up with water colors. 

Some days they ventured out of the house to tramp around the crisp, fragrant town. Ice and smoke, the smell of fresh bread and strong coffee. Dom admitted Mal’s attempt to teach him to ski had been… painful and he wasn’t yet eager to repeat the experience, and Mal seemed content to stay with them, off the mountain. They drank over-priced wine in a chalet at the base and watched skiers come in, instead; watched the awkward wobble of people in their stiff boots, watched families tucking small, unruly children into snowsuits.

A roaring fire kept them warm. Mal and Dom held hands as they lazed against each other, their fingers twisted in a loose, familiar grip, like they’d been doing it for years. It was easy for them, being together; easier than being apart ever had been. They fit like puzzle pieces, and the sudden security of finding their complement had settled their youthful restlessness immediately. Arthur tried not to think about it, selfishly; tried not to let the envy in. He ignored the hollowness he still felt thinking how close he’d been to something like that with Eames. How _easy_ it had been, being together, sweet and uncomplicated. But of course it hadn’t really been: it had all been a farce. 

With the snow coming down outside, a mug of hot cocoa in his hands, Arthur would wonder, against his better judgment: where was Eames now? Had he followed his mates off into the snow as well, to some distant ski chalet filled with beautiful people, money? Was someone new wrapped up in his arms, someone—most importantly—of his own ilk? The one thing Arthur could never be.

Christmas was quiet, and mostly for Mal and Miles, who swapped a few small gifts in the morning after breakfast. Arthur and Dom gave Miles a nice print they’d gotten in town, something for his office back in Oxford, as a thank you. They stuffed themselves with nougat blanc and a decadent chocolate Buche de Noel split between the four of them, to almost nauseating effect. Miles shared with them a wonderful bottle of wine and they passed out that night, full and utterly blissful. 

They next day Arthur left to head back to Oxford, because he’d have to face it sooner or later, and then keep facing it every day for the next nine months. It couldn’t become a painful place for him; he needed to wear it in again, make it home. 

But first: London.

He hadn’t been able to spend any real time in the city yet. Other students jumped the train for it every other weekend, but Arthur could never justify such an obvious distraction. All that history, tucked up into neat, sprawling museums; art galleries, over-priced gastropubs—what was any of that to him? An indulgence, and not one he felt he had earned. 

But a message had arrived from an old friend a few weeks ago—he’d be in London for a few hours on a stopover on his way back to the States, did Arthur want to meet up for a drink?—and he had time now to spare a day or two, as good as any. And maybe he needed the reminder his friend would bring: of the life Arthur was playing at escaping, which would start biting at his heels soon enough, ready to drag him back. 

He stood in the Arcade at St. Pancras for a long minute, appreciating the rush of hurried bodies in their black coats and sensible shoes coming and going, watching the people at small tables who were still waiting for their turn, eating sandwiches, the straps of scuffed-up bags tangled around their ankles as a precaution, who were there one moment and gone the next, replaced with the next anxious, restless traveler. Here London felt like a place one could fall into and disappear entirely, if one wanted to— _needed_ to—and Arthur was instantly a little in love. 

People pushed past him, no one really seeing him, and at last he heaved his bag up on his shoulder and started for an exit, falling in step, indistinguishable, with everyone else. He was just turning a corner when he was knocked back a step, one side of his body meeting with the immovable force of another’s opposite trajectory. His instinct was to keep his head down, apologize over their apology, and keep walking. But suddenly there was his name in the air, breathy with disbelief:

“Arthur.”

And he would recognize that voice anywhere, caramel sweet and melted smooth. 

He looked up, stunned, and met Eames’s wide eyes with his own look of incredulity. 

Eames put a hand on Arthur’s arm to gently move them both a step to the side, out of the flow of foot traffic, and then quickly removed it, looking sheepishly at the spot where he’d touched Arthur. 

“Sorry,” he said. “Hi.”

“Hello,” Arthur said, his voice gone croaky and weirdly formal. He glanced down the whole of Eames, noted the suitcase and fine leather duffle bag, but he didn’t ask. 

“Small bloody world,” Eames said. 

Arthur shrugged. “I guess,” he said, checking his watch. “But I’ve actually gotta—“

“Wait,” Eames said quickly, fidgeting. He closed his eyes and took a moment to steady himself, breathing out slowly. He looked at Arthur again, his eyes sharp. “Sorry. It’s just—can we go somewhere?”

“Eames…”

“Just, you know, just let’s grab a tea, yeah? Can we? I owe you—“

“You don’t owe me anything, anymore,” Arthur said. He’d made sure of it the last time he saw Eames. He’d tied up all their loose ends and set himself free, washed his hands of the charade. Or that’s what he’d been telling himself ever since, like it might ease the ache. But now, standing so close to Eames, Arthur could feel his heart thumping rabbit-like in his chest, begging to be listened to. _Mind me_ , it was saying, as if Arthur had any idea where to even fucking start. He was as done with Eames as Eames was with him—that’d been _the whole fucking point._ So why did he feel so wretched, exposed to Eames’s ice cap eyes, smelling the amber musk of him. 

“Okay,” Eames said, holding his hands up, palms out: placating. “Not—like that. I just thought…”

Arthur gave Eames a moment to finish, but he never did. His eyes flittered away, he bit his lip. He had a crumpled train ticket in one hand. Arthur wasn’t sure if he was coming or going, or if it mattered.

Arthur looked at his watch again. It wasn’t yet noon; he had a few hours yet before his friend got in. Still, he knew he should say no, for his own well-being.

And yet. Eames was here, standing right in front of him, and he was alone. Arthur looked closer, and it was startling, the details of him. He was scruffy. His jacket was wrinkled and he’d let a shadow grow over his jaw, a week’s or so worth of wiry hair. His face looked drawn, wan, like someone who hadn’t slept much lately. The slope of his shoulders was new. The way he was shuffling his feet and rucking his greasy hair up, like a tick. He looked worn in a way Arthur had never seen him before. 

Arthur didn’t think so highly of himself as to assume he’d had a part in it, this patina of disuse that had settled over Eames. Probably a long holiday had done it; he’d probably exhausted himself with inexhaustibly pretty little things, with drugs and drink and nights that turned too soon into mornings, time roiling unsteadily before him like one more thing he could conquer and bend to his will. 

But still Arthur wondered—couldn’t help it. Wondered if just maybe, he had been able to wreck Eames. Just a little. And what did it say about Arthur that he wanted a little desperately to find out? 

“I need to be at Victoria Station by 4pm,” Arthur said. “I’m meeting someone.” 

Eames risked a small smile—rueful, hopeful—and nodded. 

It was unseasonably bright outside, if not exactly warm, when they stepped out onto the pavement, moving through the crowd in a single file, Arthur following Eames with a safe long step between them. The sharpness of the air helped to clear Arthur’s head, settled the unease growing in his stomach, the fluttering of his heart. Eames flagged them down a cab.

They didn’t speak once they were sat inside, each pressed against the opposite door, their bags pooling in the empty space around their feet. Arthur, for his part, kept his eyes on the window, on everything passing by in a blur of red and black, grey stone facades, a temperamental blue sky. It still disoriented him sometimes, being shuttled along on the wrong side of the road. He rested his head against the glass to get closer to it, the grand busyness of the city, the hum of life—it was a balm to be so removed from the smallness of Oxford, to be reminded of the world far and away from himself and its insular worries. 

Eames cleared his throat, startling Arthur and bringing his focus back inside the car. He turned his head and caught Eames looking at him curiously.

“You’ve never been to London, have you?” he asked.

His boyish wonder, he supposed, had leaked onto his face. Embarrassed, Arthur straightened away from the window, pushing his shoulders back to affect some semblance of posture. He didn’t answer Eames’ question, preferring to fold and unfold his hands in his lap, staring straight ahead, as though suddenly unimpressed.

“It’s a shame, is all,” Eames murmured. He tilted the side of his head against his own window, but didn’t bother with the view. He stared blankly at the back of the seat in front of him. “I reckon you could love London, given time.” 

Eames wasn’t wrong, Arthur thought. But he wouldn’t say that, either. 

Eventually the the cab pulled out of traffic to idle along the pavement. Arthur let Eames pay and followed him out onto the curb.

“Where are we?” Arthur finally asked, dragging his bag up onto his shoulder. 

“Tate Britain,” he said.

“I thought we were grabbing a tea.”

“There’s a cafe inside.”

“With tea worth a £30 cab?” he asked, his voice sharp. Unnecessary shows of wealth would always, to Arthur, be just that: unnecessary. 

Eames looked a little nervous. “It’s… No, it’s just tea. But it’s close to Victoria Station and, well…” 

Eames loved the Tate Britain.

Arthur remembered now, just barely. They’d talked about it once, some dreary afternoon when they’d locked themselves away in Eames’s rooms, the fire lit and blankets draped around them to catch the draft. They hadn’t seen each other for a few days and Arthur was feeling clingy, hooking his cold feel around Eames’s ankles. Nursing a mug of tea, Arthur felt content, blissed out, and he caught himself staring at an unframed painting Eames had propped up against the far wall, un-hung. Dizzying swirls of grey and blue, shocks of brown lost among them. 

“That one new?” Arthur had asked, figuring Eames for the artist. Something in the rhythm of the strokes reminded Arthur of the series Eames had been working on for the past week, though the color palate was all wrong. Arthur didn’t know much about art—he was always saying this to Eames, half-defensive, half-apologetic—but he always tried to show himself a willing pupil. 

Eames had quirked his eyebrow and watched Arthur for a long, critical moment. “You think that’s mine?”

“It’s not?”

Eames was silent until he wasn’t, until he was laughing—a little too loudly, like the performance of a laugh, Arthur had thought at the time. The noise had caused him to curl in on himself some, when it was obvious he was the butt of some joke he didn’t understand. 

“It’s Turner,” Eames said at last, leaning back against the arm of the couch, one arm flung cooly over the back. He was watching Arthur still, like that should mean something. 

“You know I don’t know art,” Arthur said quietly. 

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Eames said. He turned his head to look wistfully at the painting. “It’s up in the Tate Britain, of course. As it should be.”

“The original? That’s just a reproduction?” Arthur leaned forward and squinted. Even at a distance he could see there was texture to the paint, shadows. “Christ. Even your copies of things are nicer than ours,” Arthur said, thinking of the poster sales they’d had in college, of the thousands of _The Starry Night_ posters hung in dorm rooms across America, flat re-prints that could never hope to capture the vibrancy of the tiny canvas locked away in the MoMA. 

Eames hummed thoughtfully. “Have you ever been?”

“To the Tate Britain? No,” Arthur admitted. 

“Then put it on the list, darling. We’ll go there first, one of these days, eh? The National Gallery, the Tate Modern, blah blah blah, they’re all wonderful, but the Tate Britain…”

And Arthur knew what a very special thing it was, to be Eames’s favorite. Or at least he’d thought he had. 

As promised, Eames led them straight to the cafe inside once they’d left their bags with the coat check. It was a squat, white room with low vaulted ceilings, and the average patron seemed roughly three times his and Eames’s age, sitting alone at one table or another, a single saucer of tea and a package of crumbly biscuits before them. Where a couple sat, white haired, sagging, powdery faces, Arthur could just hear their murmured conversation, piques of interest and devotion, a well-heeled reverence for whatever they’d already seen that day, what they planned to see next. Eames gestured to a small table in the corner with mismatched vinyl chairs in orange and robin’s egg blue. Arthur sat while Eames fetched them drinks, and he tried not to fidget too terribly much in the interim.

Because what was he _doing_? Why had he ever agreed to tea? Why had he followed Eames _halfway across town_ to do so? It made no sense, on either of their parts. Eames should hate Arthur, like Arthur hated him. Hadn’t Arthur pushed for that, hadn’t that been the whole point? He had wanted to show Eames he could give as well as he got, that he would not be made a victim or a joke, and that if Eames ever tried anything again, he would find Arthur a worthy adversary. 

But there was no fight in Eames now, Arthur thought. Even from across the room, Arthur watched him wait for their teas with hunched shoulders. It was a terrible look on him, this supplication—if it even was that. He bore the impression of a starved, kicked dog and _it wasn’t fair._ Arthur was the one who’d been hurt, who’d been played the fool. Eames had no right to look _wounded_.

The porcelain saucers clattered against the tabletop as Eames sat them down, and only then did Arthur notice Eames’s hands shaking. He withdrew them quickly, folding his arms across his chest, tucking his fingers under his armpits. Defensive. Arthur slid a tea closer to himself and methodically added three sugars, a little milk. He stirred, and the spoon seemed like the loudest thing in the room. 

“Where were you off to? Or, coming back from?” Eames asked eventually, when the silence between them had grown cold and taut. 

Arthur had half a mind not to tell him—why should it matter to Eames? _Why should anything?_ But eventually he just said, “Visiting friends.” 

“Mal? Dominic Cobb?”

“I suppose you think they’re the only friends I have,” Arthur said tersely, like it was Eames’s fault that Arthur had only ever talked about them. Like it was Eames’s fault that yes, perhaps they were his only friends here—but was that really such a terrible thing? Eames might have dozens at his disposal, but Dom and Mal had proved themselves to be true and lovely to him, over and over again, and Arthur wouldn’t trade them for the lot of Eames’s so-called friends.

“No, I mean—“ Eames stuttered a little, flustered. “It’s nice,” he said, sounding decisive. “It’s good. That you… have people.” 

Arthur thought of Dom wrapping his arm around Arthur protectively, holding him up, holding him back; of Mal standing in the middle of a snowy Oxford street, towering over Eames’s crumpled form, his cheek red, his eyes dazed. Arthur had forgotten what it’d felt like to be protected by people who just loved him, nothing more. It was nice. It was _good._

“They’re good people,” Arthur said stubbornly. He set his cup down with slightly too much force, as if to emphasize this, and they both watched a glob of tea slosh angrily onto the table top. 

“I don’t have a problem with them,” Eames said. He was beginning to sound frustrated. “I just mean it’s nice. That’s all I mean, Arthur. It’s nice that you have good people to look after you.” 

“I don’t need looking after.”

“Apparently you do.”

“Fuck you,” Arthur said, feeling more tired than angry. 

“No, _fuck you_ , if you don’t appreciate them and what they’d do for you.”

“I appreciate them just fine. I don’t need a lecture from _you_ on _friendship_. Or have you forgotten that I know a little of the quality of company you keep? So I say again, _fuck you_ , and excuse me if I don’t think you’re exactly qualified to speak on the subject.” 

“Exactly!” Eames said. It was just below a shout but in the quiet cafe, the outburst drew a dozen stares. Lower, he continued, “Exactly. _Exactly_. You’re bloody lucky, darling.” 

After a long pause, after the fire in Arthur died a little, he said, “They were looking for you. Your friends.” 

Eames looked at him, confused. 

“The night I found you, when I said they’d been harassing me. They were looking for you. I didn’t know if maybe… if you thought they didn’t care you’d gone missing for a few days.” It wasn’t what Arthur thought he’d say; never thought he’d be assuring Eames of the steadiness of his terrible friends, but there was something so dejected about this Eames, sitting here, insisting Arthur treasure his own friends, that compelled Arthur to return the sentiment. Because maybe Eames needed to hear it. Arthur had needed to hear it about Dom and Mal, even if he chose to pretend he didn’t. It was a kindness—whether earned or not. 

“I didn’t think that,” Eames said. 

“Oh.”

“I knew they were looking for me. They weren’t looking for me because of that, because they were _concerned_. Believe me,” he said sardonically. 

“Why were they looking for you then?”

“I suppose they wanted to _teach me a lesson_.” 

Arthur’s eyebrows went up.

“As you’ve already so astutely pointed out, darling. They’re not a particular good bunch of eggs, that lot.” 

Arthur hesitated. “But they’re your friends.” 

Eames flinched. “What is it they say, about the company you keep?” 

“You are the company you keep.”

“Just so,” Eames said gruffly, slamming back his tea. “Could bloody well do with something a bit stronger,” he muttered. 

“Eames, why were they looking for you?”

Eames didn’t say anything.

“Eames?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said at last. “It’s done.” He toyed now with the his empty mug.

“Where were _you_ going?” Arthur asked. “At the train station? You weren’t coming back from somewhere. You had a ticket in your hand.” 

Eames looked away, his mouth downturned. “Can I show you something?” he asked finally. 

The gallery space was wide and painted warmly, with lacquered wood floors and a few narrow, padded benches, a bright ceiling. At intervals along the walls hung gilt-framed canvases dwarfing the steady bodies before them, standing at attention, their arms folded at the small of their backs (the men) or crossed in front of their bodies (the women), museum maps clutched in one hand or the other. They looked thoughtful, every one of them, enraptured, becalmed. 

Arthur had never been taught how to treat art like this. When Eames had first shown Arthur his work, he’d felt like he was play acting through his reaction: he’d nodded, his eyes seeming to scrutinize, consider, and then finally the praise. That’s how it went, right? Eames had seen through him, probably, and had tried to walk him through what he anticipated his professor would say about it from a critical point of view, but Arthur felt a little wretched at how subjective the process seemed, and decided that art criticism was probably not the pursuit for him personally. 

Because mostly Arthur could look at a piece of art and think it was beautiful, or he could look at it and think absolutely nothing at all. He wasn’t even sure if he’d ever looked at a painting and been horrified, disappointed, disgusted. Maybe unimpressed, but even then Arthur usually assumed it was a deficiency in him that prevented him from being properly impressed, which was no fault of the artist or the art itself. 

No, Arthur had never learned to really consider art, to breathe it in, be transformed by it. Not like these people. Not like Eames. It made him something of a plebeian, he knew. Uncultured swine, etc. But he’d never learned to love beautiful things you couldn’t _do_ anything with, and maybe he never would.

Eames, though.

Eames, given any chance at all, would fall in line immediately. Arthur knew this. It was probably the most obvious thing anyone could know about Eames: that he could easily waste an hour, waste an entire day, standing at attention before one beautiful thing and then the next. Five minutes just staring. Longer. Until his feet ached with stillness and his eyes had gone dry. Then he’d blink, step a foot to his right, and do it all over again. 

But Eames didn’t do that now. Instead he marched them into the gallery and made a purposeful beeline for the back corner of the room. There was a couple already standing where Eames clearly meant to be standing, obscuring whatever work was on the wall. Eames cleared his throat and earned both him and Arthur a sharp look, but all the same: the couple quietly moved on, and there it was: the Turner from Eames’s room. The real one. 

Arthur wasn’t exactly sure what to say, though he could feel Eames’s eyes on him as they stood side by side before it. It was a fine painting? A little drab. Maybe it was technically impressive, Arthur had no idea. 

He supposed it must be one of Eames’s favorite painting, if he had a reproduction hanging in his dorm room. And maybe he thought it meant something to share it with Arthur.

“I know this one,” Arthur said finally.

“You do?”

“Yeah.” He felt a little foolish at the pride in Eames’s voice, like it was an accomplishment that Arthur might recognize any art. “I recognize it from your room,” he admitted. 

“ _Snow Storm, Steam_ ,” Eames recited. “ _Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth._ And which do you prefer?” Eames asked, rocking back on his heels. Fidgeting. 

“What do you mean?”

“Which do you prefer, the one in my room or this one, here?”

“I thought they were the same,” Arthur said, suddenly unsure. He paused, going over the memory again. “Are they not? Were they different paintings from the same series? You know I’m hopeless with this stuff, Eames.”

“No, they’re the same. Or _practically_ the same. I mean, I’m not sure this swath of gold here is _exactly_ right, but no one has said anything yet,” said Eames, stilling. He leaned forward and gestured at, with one blunt finger, a tiny bright golden streak at the heart of the whole painting. The center of the storm. 

“I don’t understand,” Arthur said. 

“Alistair’s grandfather donated this to the museum. Did you know that?” 

“Why would I know that?” Arthur said, his frustration obvious in the flat gruffness of his voice. If Eames expected Arthur to be surprised, he wasn’t at all; Arthur had absolutely no illusions about the obvious wealth of Eames’s lot. No one could: they wore it so proudly. If he expected Arthur to be impressed, then Eames had missed his target again: Arthur couldn’t care less about a tour of luxury philanthropy—how could Eames think he would? Had Arthur ever shown any particular interest in Eames’s money, his connections? Had he somehow given Eames the impression he could be wooed by such shows of gross privilege? Arthur felt dizzy and aggravated, if not a little ill, suddenly, trying to keep up with Eames, trying to understand his _fucking point._

“He did,” Eames continued, sounding a little desperate. “Years ago, obviously. It’s a particular point of pride with that family, their art collection. They donate a piece every time one of them croaks. A sort of _in memoriam_ , they’d say. More like a reminder that they _matter_ , and always have, and always will. There are plaques celebrating their generosity all over Europe I suspect, though I’ve only seen a few of them myself.” Eames’s voice, Arthur was relieved to hear, betrayed no affection, no admiration for the practice. 

“I don’t understand why you’re telling me any of this.” 

Eames’s frowned, his brow furrowing. Arthur watched him inhale sharply and let it out.

“Look at it again.”

Arthur sighed heavily, annoyed—Eames _knew_ he wasn’t any good with this—and hunched forward. His eyes ran over the painting top to bottom, left to right, reading the micro of it: color, strokes. He stepped back and took in the macro: motion, scale. Finally he shrugged. 

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be seeing,” Arthur said.

Eames leaned close to Arthur until his lips almost touched his ear—Arthur tried not to shiver but it was a close thing—and whispered, “It’s a fake.” 

Arthur jerked away and looked at him, his eyes wide. He looked back at the painting, then back at Eames. 

“How do you know?”

“Because I did it.”

Arthur laughed because he didn’t know what else to do. He laughed loudly, and meanly, and shoved Eames away—he was hovering at Arthur’s side, too close, too close. 

Eames looked confused, if not a little hurt, and Arthur wanted to shove him harder just for that. For having the gall to look _vulnerable_ even while he was lying to Arthur’s fucking face. 

Arthur turned on his heel and started out of the gallery.

“Arthur,” Eames called, following after him. It echoed through the vaulted hallways, the sprawling galleries, his name, but Arthur didn’t stop. He shoved his hands into his front pockets, hunched in on himself even more, and focused on remembering the way out. 

Eames caught up to him at the coat check, where Arthur had to stop to retrieve his bag. 

“Please, darling, if you’d let me—“ 

“Don’t _call me that_ ,” Arthur snapped. The attendant stood awkwardly between them, and Arthur handed him the £5 note in his pocket as an apology. Arthur hated making scenes in public. Arthur hated being knocked back on the wrong foot, losing his bearings, losing his composure. He hiked his bag onto his shoulder and headed for the front doors. 

Eames forwent collecting his own bags and followed Arthur out. 

“Arthur, _please._ ” 

Arthur finally stopped and turned around so quickly, Eames nearly barreled into him. “If you had learned anything— _anything_ —from all of this, I’d have thought you’d have realized I don’t exactly take kindly to being lied to. To my _fucking face_ ,” Arthur said, seething. 

“I’m not lying,” Eames said with earnest. 

“Why? _Why_?” Arthur shouted, shoving at Eames again, palms flat against his chest. Arthur was still strong, when he needed to be, and Eames stumbled backwards, catching the stone stairs. He went down, hard, and Arthur towered over him.

“What do you get out of making me look like fucking fool? Huh? Eames? I thought the game was done: you won. Why are you still _playing?_ Why me? Why am I still—can’t you just leave me alone?” Arthur’s voice had gone thick and low. He felt wrecked and a little wild, a little mad. 

Eames tried to right himself, sitting up to lean forward and grab one of Arthur’s hand, anything to anchor them both. 

“Darling, darling, I promise you—“

“Stop it!”

“Darling I’m—I’m not—I’m not _lying_ to you,” Eames begged. “I’m trying to—not _fix it_ , Christ I know I can’t, I’m just—“

“You’re some kind of art thief. A Forger,” Arthur said, resigned. 

“Yes. Exactly that.” 

Eames still had Arthur by the hand, and Arthur wasn’t pulling away. It was like the fight all went out of him at once, his head falling forward, his shoulders slumped. Eames pulled at him until he gave in entirely, like a marionette with its strings cut, and collapsed on the step beside Eames. 

“It’s not a great fake,” Eames began quietly. “I mean, it’s fine, just looking at it. It’s fine if you don’t know, if you don’t _suspect._ But when the rumor gets out that the original has hit the black market, the museum’s going to have to look at that they’ve got hanging in their gallery very closely indeed. As soon as they carbon date the paint the whole thing will fall apart. I am—despite what you may think, darling—a man of limited means. But I did the best I could.” 

“I don’t understand,” said Arthur, staring at the traffic going past on Millbank, at the clearing sky, at the stone step where his feet were propped—anywhere but at Eames, really.

“They’ll have to trace it, once they realize it’s fake. To try and find out where the fake originated, and of course the first place they’ll look is at Alistair’s family, the donors. Did _they_ know it was fake when they gifted it to the museum? Dreadful, dreadful. They’ve also put up pieces at the National Gallery and the Musée d’Orsay, and now those will all have to be taken down as well, re-examined by experts. They won’t get in any _real_ trouble—they donated the paintings, they didn’t profit from them, so technically no crime was committed, but it’ll be a PR nightmare, not to mention how people— _their people_ —will _talk_. Especially if there ends up being any sort of pattern—if any of the others turn out to be fakes as well.”

They were both quiet for a long time. Arthur, for his part, had no idea what to say.

“Come on,” Eames said at last, as though he hadn’t just admitted to a crime Arthur couldn’t even comprehend. “Let’s walk. You’re meeting your friend at the station, right? Best not keep them waiting.”

“Your bags are still inside,” Arthur said dumbly.

Eames shrugged. “I’ll come back for them.”

They started to walk.

“Why did you tell me all of that?” Arthur asked, when they had both been silent for a long time. 

“So you’d know.” 

“Know what? That you’ve supposedly set up a bunch of rich assholes to be publicly humiliated?” 

“They think they’re untouchable but they’re not. No one is,” Eames said, bitterness cutting through the casualness into which he’d just settled. “They get off on making other people feel small and weak because they’re scared, too—scared about who they’d be if they lost everything that makes them, _them_. It was all just handed to them so easily, and they know it. They fear it—that it all might be taken away just as easily. They only act like they control the world—that’s their game, it’s how they win, because no one else ever thinks to question it. So I’ll make people question it.” 

“But why implicate yourself in the process? Even just to me? What am I supposed to do with that information, Eames?”

“Whatever you like. You stay quiet, sleep soundly for their misfortune. Or you can turn me in, and they’ll keep on winning, the rest of their fucking lives.” 

“And if I don’t want that responsibility?”

“Don’t think of it as a responsibility. Think of it as leverage.”

“Against you.”

“Yes.”

“And why would I want that?”

Eames stopped walking, Victoria Station within sight, and turned to Arthur with his sad, clear eyes. “Because it’s the only thing I can give you, darling,” he said, holding his palms out as if in offering. “You want honesty? Here, take it: I am not who you think I am. I am not who anyone thinks I am. I’m no one. I am this. I trade in _this._ And you _know that now_. You’ve suspected it, I think, before. But now you know.” 

Arthur thought back to the Chateau Mouton-Rothschild in Eames’s room, its perfect label and rancid taste. _Fake, fraud, liar._ Eames, who was one person with Arthur and someone else entirely to his friends, then someone else entirely to Dom and Mal. And they all thought, maybe especially Arthur, that they were the special ones, the ones who _got him._ Saw the real Eames. But did they really? 

There was pleading in Eames’s voice now, as he continued, his hands falling limp at his sides. 

“I tried my whole life to be a very specific person because it was supposed to be easy. They all made it look easy, those people, that life. And yet it was never was, for me. Wasn’t easy to get inside, wasn’t easy to stay there. But I had it—I was doing it—and I was _fine._ I was making it work. And then I met you, Arthur, and you were so lovely. Lovelier than anyone else I’d ever met. I didn’t even understand it, because everyone I knew seemed to be, at their core, actually terrible: but you weren’t. You were the opposite, all grumpy and put together on the outside, and inside, you were… splendid. And I didn’t ever have to try with you, you just let me be whoever it was I needed or wanted to be, and I’d never had that before. And it scared me. And also… I didn’t know how to stop. The life I was leading, it had momentum, and I didn’t know how to stop it. All I knew how to do—all I’ve ever known how to do—is pretend. How could I be real with anyone, when there was nothing real about me? Not a single story, a single memory I’d ever told anyone hadn’t been doctored in the re-telling, or forged entirely.” 

He laughed, derisive, pathetic, and looked away from Arthur, like he couldn’t bear it any longer, Arthur’s eyes on him. But they were standing in the middle of London, and there was nowhere to hide. The streets around them were so loud, so full of life: black taxis and bright red buses and people moving so quickly from one place to the next, no one pausing to look at them, just two young boys standing a foot apart, feeling wrecked—looking, Arthur suspected, quite wrecked. Like they’d discovered the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, and it wasn’t 42: it was something horrible. Eames’s face was pale and drawn, and he looked unsteady on his feet, out of place and striking like the golden smear at the heart of Turner’s painting. 

How odd, to be standing still while an afternoon gave way to evening, while people pooled and poured around you, indistinct, containing each of them a haphazard little life. Arthur hadn’t spent enough time in cities to realize how it was, when you were caught in the heart of one—that it was like being caught in the eye of a storm. If you stood still at all, all possible life moved so quickly around you, you missed it. You missed every important thing. It was so easy to be distracted by noise and shiny things; people relied on that kind of easy obfuscation, even people who weren’t master forgers like Eames. It was just too painful to be really be seen. It was easier to blend into the crowd, to build whole cities around them in which to hide.

Arthur thought he was finally, just now, seeing Eames. And yes, it was painful indeed.

“And that bet—that bloody stupid bet. I didn’t—“ Eames tried again, turning back to Arthur so suddenly Arthur jumped where he was standing. He could hear his own heart now, shuddering against his ribs, louder than all the traffic in London. 

“I didn’t sleep with you because… I wanted it to be real. I didn’t want it to be because of _them._ You are so much better than them, than me—and you deserved better. I just… I didn’t know how to end it, once everything was set in motion. I thought, if I did, they’d find me out: find out everything I’d ever told them about who I was, was a lie, and then who would I be? Who would I have? I’m a coward, Arthur. I sacrificed you, to keep myself safe. I regret that now. I do. I regretted it immediately.”

Eames took a deep, shuddering breath, and Arthur held his. 

“I can’t undo it,” Eames finished. “I can’t take it back and make it so it didn’t happen. But I am sorry, darling. I haven’t been sorry for much in my life—cognitive dissonance and all that, I find ways to justify everything—but _you_. What I did to you. For that, I am sorry.”

And then Arthur let it out, all the breath in him, and with it came a noise like keening, quiet and hurtful. He slapped his hand across his mouth, his eyes showing his own horror, caught as they were by Eames’s piercing, insistent gaze.

Arthur blinked madly and looked away at last. “You would have had me,” he whispered hoarsely, when he finally removed his hand. 

“I would’ve fucked it up, one way or another,” Eames said, resigned. “I’m not really meant to have beautiful things. Only imitations of them.” 

“I didn’t know what to do,” Arthur said. Even to his own ears, he sounded embarrassingly young, still blindsided by everything Eames had told him. It was too much, he couldn’t process the half of it. Someone walking past knocked into his shoulder, jostling him, and that, too, was too much. Arthur’s body felt like a live-wire, tense and dangerous. Delicate. 

He looked at Eames, looked to him for some answer, but Eames only shrugged, looking past him. He looked emptied out, exhausted, his eyes dull and unfocused. Arthur almost wanted to go to him, even though he was just a foot away. He wanted to reach out and touch some part of him: his wrist, maybe rest his hand on Eames’s neck. Something to ground them both, as he knew they both had that dazed, knocked-around look about them, woozy as they were, standing still in the middle of a moving crowd. 

But then suddenly someone was calling Arthur’s name and it wasn’t Eames. 

Arthur looked up, looked across the street towards the station and there: a man in military fatigues standing straight and strong in the fading afternoon light. He had a standard issue duffle bag in one hand and the other was waving, calling to him.

“Darling!”


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the lovely anon who left me a note on my Tumblr, asking if I ever meant to finish this fic... well, yes? I would like to, at any rate. And I remember that I'd essentially had this finished chapter sitting on my computer for a year, so here we are. Honesty hour, though: I've got nothing started on the next chapter, so it may still be a while before I get everything wrapped up. But dammit, I'm going to try. xx
> 
> As always, forever thanks to kedgeree, my True North beta.

“Darling!”

A voice once so familiar, now almost forgotten. Arthur turned toward it—him—and raised a hand to wave back, dumbly. He could feel Eames’s eyes on him now. 

The man jogged across the closest zebra crossing with a wide, white, American smile plastered on his face and he threw his free arm around Arthur as soon as he got to him, pounding him on the back in greeting. He didn’t smell like the dirt of a foreign land—Arthur had wondered if he might. He didn’t smell musty from the plane. He smelled, maybe, just a bit like home, and he felt like it, too. Strong and familiar, if changed in ways Arthur couldn’t put his finger on. His uniform was freshly washed. Homesickness curdled in Arthur’s stomach. 

“Williams,” Arthur said as they stepped apart. 

“Damn, Darling. It’s good to see you.” Williams held Arthur at arm’s length for a beat, looking him up and down. “But what’s England done to you, man? It’s made you soft.” Williams laughed and flexed his fingers around Arthur’s bicep, where they were already wrapped, holding Arthur upright. Williams whistled and made a good-natured tsk-ing noise with his tongue. 

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Eames start to back away. 

“Wait,” Arthur said quickly, trying to catch him. Everything was happening at once now and Arthur just needed _one goddamn minute_. “Eames.”

“Your friend is waiting,” he said, his eyes not quite meeting Arthur’s. His brow was furrowed as if he, too, was just trying to make sense of everything. He briefly glanced around Arthur to where Williams stood, straight and respectful, and he didn’t look as though he knew what to make of the familiarity. Arthur wondered if he’d finally put Eames on the back foot—if, finally, Arthur had more pieces of whatever puzzle they were both trying to understand. 

Quieter, taking a step close, Arthur said, “If you’re running from this, you don’t—I won’t—“

“Maybe you should though. Maybe it’s right that I get caught out. I don’t know, Arthur. I’m tired. I’m really bloody tired.”

Arthur looked over his shoulder at Williams, who had a particular look on his face, and then back to Eames, who did as well. 

“Eames…”

Eames’s focus strayed to Arthur then, but he stayed quiet.

And Arthur wanted to say—he wanted to tell Eames, _Maybe I’m not who you thought I was, either._ Because it was true. It was hard to admit it to himself—he’d never thought to use the word. But now that it was in his head, he knew it wasn’t wrong: He, too, was a fraud. Arthur-as-a-Rhodes-Scholar was a fraud. And suddenly it seemed so important that Eames know that. _I was not ever the boy you thought; I was never even supposed to be here,_ he wanted to say. _Look at him, don’t you get it? He’s me. He’s who I was meant to be. There’s still a uniform somewhere, packed away, with my name on it. I’ve faked every important part of me for months and months. And don’t you see—at least you_ knew _what you were doing; at least you remembered where you ended and the fraud started. I’m not sure I did. I let myself forget. And that’s more dangerous than anything._

But it all caught in his throat. Eames was standing so close, was standing _right there,_ and he might be the only other person who would understand how Arthur felt—the very thing that had been gnawing at him, silently, for so long—but Eames was going to walk away. Arthur was going to, too. Because life dictated that they do so. Williams was at his back still, waiting. Eames had a train to catch to—somewhere. They’d gotten it wrong and there was no time left. 

_“_ Maybe we don’t know each other at all correctly,” Arthur said at last. “But that’s doesn’t mean—“ Arthur stopped. He didn’t know _what_ it meant, exactly. He didn’t know what he wanted it to mean, for them. “I’ll see you back in Oxford, okay? Maybe we can—When we’re both back, maybe we can—”

Eames watched him carefully, his blue eyes growing dark in the falling London evening. Arthur didn’t fidget; he didn’t breathe. He held that gaze like an equal, or so he hoped. 

“Goodbye, Darling,” Eames said, holding out his hand. 

Arthur didn’t want to take it. He was seized, suddenly, with a bone-deep fear that _this was it._ And he didn’t want it to be. Not now. But there was nothing left in him he could think to say, to keep Eames here a little while longer. Life pulsed around them, moving on. And maybe it was time for them to do the same. They’d run the clock down and here they were, the potential of them spoiled.

“Goodbye, Eames,” Arthur said, his voice hitching. He took Eames’s hand, gave it a firm, lingering shake.

The roar of the city returned as soon as Eames turned his back. Arthur watched him go, disappearing into the monochrome crowds along Vauxhall Bridge Road, and only when he was certain he could no longer distinguish Eames’s faded long coat from a hundred others, did Arthur turn away. 

Williams cleared his throat. “So. Where to?” 

The very matter of Arthur’s brain felt like soup, sloshing and useless. 

Arthur had no idea. How _stupid_. 

He wondered just what idea Williams had of him, of the life he was living here instead of the one he was meant to be living halfway across the world (in either direction). It probably wasn’t kind. Arthur had on his nicest new coat—a heavy wool peacoat, double-breasted, that hugged him just right, as if tailored—his shoes were polished up and not yet stained with salt from the damp streets, his hair (long now, compared to Williams’s) was slicked back with pomade. The shell of him was sleek, put together with no seams—a luxury he’d fallen into inexcusably. So maybe he looked the part of a city-dweller, the sort of metropolitan man who would know just where to go for a good stiff cocktail. 

But he didn’t. He barely knew which way was north. 

However this was England—Arthur knew that much—which meant there would be a pub at practically every corner if he started looking, and that the closer to five o’clock it got, the easier it’d be to follow any group of businessmen into the nearest half-decent one. 

“We’ll find somewhere,” is what he said, picking a direction at random, falling in line with the foot traffic heading away from the station. Williams, wordlessly, followed suit. 

Arthur tried not to think about Eames. He felt like he was always trying not to these days, except now it was so much worse. It didn’t sting, like the thrill of a new hurt; it was dull. An ache that he might feel forever on rainy days.

Eventually Arthur found a place that felt rich and comfortable, warm and just on the right side of crowded (anonymity without the claustrophobia). Out of the corner of his eye, Arthur noticed Williams flinch as a boisterous group pushed past them, beers (a second round? A third?) sloshing over their grubby hands, and Arthur made a point to find them a table with clearance. He kept them close enough to the door, but far enough away from the constant comings and goings of too-loud patrons. 

Dressed in his nice coat, sitting here beside a man in army fatigues in a pub in central London, Arthur should’ve felt posh. Worldly. He didn’t. He understood, even before they’d talked, that Williams knew much more of the world and of life than Arthur. Arthur had shut himself away from it. 

“I’ll get us some drinks, yeah?” Arthur said. 

When Arthur returned to the table with a pint for them both—something cheap on tap—Williams quickly cradled his in his hands and slurped at the surface, his eyes rolling back. 

“How fucking nice is that?” Williams said.

Arthur nodded, took a swig of his own, and then another when he couldn’t think of a good first thing to say.

Williams eyed him, from the strands of hair falling loose now, tucked behind his ears, to his thinning arms and narrow torso. Arthur felt he had been found wanting and was suddenly embarrassed about his wasting body, ignored in a way he hadn’t been allowed to do for years.

“So. How’d you manage it?” Williams said finally, when they were each half a pint down and growing warm, loose. 

“Manage what?” 

“Fucking hell, Darling. _This_.” He gestured to Arthur, the shiny whole of him, installed in a picture of life as he never expected to know it. “How the _hell_ did you convince them to ship you out to fucking Oxford instead of, I don’t know— _anywhere else_?”

“I—it’s not a deployment,” Arthur said, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wasn’t so sure. “It’s a deferment,” he said into his glass. 

“We didn’t understand. When you missed the commissioning ceremony,” Williams said, his voice tight. “Some of the guys, they weren’t—they didn’t take too kindly, I guess, to that. I won’t lie.” 

For his entire life, Arthur hadn’t disappointed anyone, except now it seemed it was the only thing he was good at. He felt the weight of it in his stomach. How it must have seemed like an act of betrayal to his battalion. He’d known them all for four years, through dirt and rain and sweat and a little entry-level blood; through late night study sessions and FTXs. And then at the finish line, when all there was to do was celebrate surviving, suddenly he’d vanished. His commissioning uniform had been hanging up in his dorm room closet for weeks, pressed and polished, while he waited to hear back from the Rhodes selection committee—and as soon as he did, he’d folded it up and put it away in a box. 

He hadn’t told any of his friends he’d applied for the scholarship. He didn’t talk to them about his research, tell them about his letter, about Washington D.C. and his meeting with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—it didn’t even sound real to him; how would it sound to someone else? When it’d been decided that he would be allowed to defer his commissioning for another year, he hadn’t known how to tell his friends that, either, and so he’d disappeared as soon as he was able. He hadn’t even attended Commencement. He’d picked up his diploma afterward. There was no one coming to see him walk across the stage for it, so what was the point? 

Maybe he and Eames really weren’t so different after all, if all they both knew how to do was to run. 

“It’s just—what kind of deal did you strike exactly?” Williams asked, when Arthur stayed quiet. “Because I was under the impression we’d all gotten the same shit end of the stick when we signed up, that they’d polished us all up nice and good to ship out to the goddamn desert. But here you are, growing pasty in some ivory tower.” 

Arthur could hear how Williams was trying to keep his voice jovial, a kind of friendly, sarcastic banter; but there was an aftertaste of biting resentment beneath it all that couldn’t be flavored away.

Williams watched Arthur with with stern eyes. “Maybe they’ve put too much money into you now, to drop you out there like the rest of us.”

Arthur blinked at him, his mouth dropping open. After a beat he closed it again, looking away, unable to say anything. How _shameful_. Shameful that he had no rebuttal. Shameful that he, too, thought this sometimes. Shameful that _he_ _hoped_. Hoped _yes, please be true_.

It was his most cowardly thought and he’d never shared it with anyone. 

Coming to Oxford at all had sowed doubt in his friends’ minds, clearly, but this would confirm it: he wasn’t quite like them, not in all the ways they’d been taught to be, to succeed. Worse: he thought he was better, that he deserved more. Selfish, selfish. But Arthur had value, didn’t he? He was trying (not good enough, try _harder)_ to prove it, and wouldn’t it just be a waste? To put so much work into a life, only to see it blown clear away?

He looked back at Williams and began to feel a little sick, suddenly. 

For the first time in a very long time, Arthur had begun to think there was worth in not dying, and he hadn’t even realized it until just now.

Because it had become easy, so easy, to not think about it. To pretend that war and politics were theoretical practices and nothing but, confined to books and lectures. It all seemed so far away. Even with Dom, who discussed the world ad nauseam, it hadn’t felt real. He wasn’t really a part of it at all. 

Only he was supposed to be. And he’d run away, pleading. 

He wondered if Williams had come all this way to get an apology out of him. Or even just an explanation—one Arthur wasn’t sure he could give. They were supposed to have been like brothers. Wasn’t that how the narrative went? And Arthur had left him behind; left all of them behind. 

“Mark,” Arthur started, his voice small, hovering unconvincingly just above the din of the pub. 

Williams shook his head: _no._ He smiled grimly. 

“Cooper got his leg blown off. Did you hear?” 

Arthur coughed, pounded on his own sternum and looked up at Williams, wide-eyed. “No. I… hadn’t heard.”

Williams looked away, focused on some table on the far side of the pub. He drank more slowly now. “Sure did. Last month. Martin got shipped back home early, too, but I think that was more of a—issue.” He gestured to his head with one finger: _mental._

“But you’re—okay?” Arthur asked. He cringed as soon as it said it. It sounded so wrong to ask. 

Williams nodded, vaguely, finishing his drink. “Whatever you did, Darling, I’d keep it up as long as I goddamn well could. That’s my advice.” 

Williams smiled then, not like everything was okay, but like he understood. Like maybe he didn’t blame Arthur for what he’d done. Williams used to say that Arthur was the smart one, even among their band of mild geniuses, so maybe Arthur had just seen what was coming and gotten out while he could, and Williams couldn’t blame him for that; he could only regret that he hadn’t been able to, too. 

“Now, tell me about Oxford,” he said. 

So Arthur did. Arthur had made his small little family at Oxford, with Mal and Dom and part-time faces coming and going, but it was nothing like the family he’d had back in Boston, and it was impossibly easy to talk to Williams, once they got started.

They finished two more rounds. They let themselves get loose and dopey, and it felt normal, so fucking normal. Williams didn’t want to talk about Afghanistan. They talked instead about college, about Boston and what they missed, who they missed. London was grey and lit up with lights for Christmas, but it wasn’t the same. Boston was maroon and gold at Christmas, its glow warm like a storybook, and the girls in their dorm used to ply them with hot chocolate spiked with bourbon during exams, when the coffee was useless and they just needed to sleep. 

They cut themselves off before they could get morose. The reality was: no matter how fondly they remembered those days, barely six months old but somehow cobweb dusty already, there was no getting them back. Life had put its claws into them all, in one place or another, and was dragging them away. But it was nice to pretend for a bit. To see your brother standing before you, still whole, and to clasp him on the shoulder and be happy for that. They said their goodbyes when the night was still young, and that, too, felt okay. 

Arthur no longer had an appetite for London, though, and he took the last train from Paddington back to Oxford. He was asleep in his own bed just before morning. 

Arthur woke to a damp, palely-lit day, blue-white light seeping in through his window, desaturating the room. It smelled like winter—a smell Boston had first taught him, the bite in your nostrils first thing, your skin prickling with goosebumps at the very suggestion. 

His room never was very warm, not first thing, even under so many blankets, and so the idea of idling there held little appeal. He threw back the covers in one go, showing his mettle to no one but himself, and moved across the room to switch on his radiator, which clucked and groaned at him like a groggy teenager.

“Yes, I know,” Arthur muttered. He shivered for good measure and searched his wardrobe for his very warmest wool socks and a hoodie before going to the window. He pulled back the thin cotton curtains and pressed his hands against the window seams, feeling the frigid air working its way in. If for no other reason than this, Arthur found himself falling out of love with architectural relics. 

There was frost on the grass outside dusting the garden and brown nervous system of dead ivy that covered so much of the structures in sight. Everything seemed very still, though it was already late morning. But then again it wasn’t yet January and Arthur was, as he had been before Christmas, largely alone in this small hamlet of student housing. Oxford would be dead for another week or two yet.

Maybe that was just what Arthur needed: time. Time to be alone, on his own terms, without the bruising loneliness of before. Doubt, fear, rejection, humiliation—they’d sunk his brain, made it impossible to think clearly about anything that mattered. He’d been wallowing in such a thick syrup of self-loathing he’d barely been able to breathe; he’d risked losing sight of himself completely, out of _spite,_ out of a refusal to be honest with himself _for once._

But maybe now, at last, he could be. 

Arthur let the curtains fall back in place and went to the kitchen to make himself some tea and porridge. A copy of the morning’s _The_ _Independent_ sat on the communal table, already thumbed through, and Arthur allowed himself the leisure to read it front to back. He lingered on the Culture section, scanning the leads for “Turner” or “forgery,” but there was nothing. Probably it’d take time, Arthur told myself. Just a little bit of time for the news to break. Because it _would_. Eames had been so sure. 

Unless all that, too, had been a lie.

After breakfast he got himself dressed in his most resilient boots and heaviest jacket and went for a walk through The Grove. The grass crunched under his feet. The sky threatened retribution but ultimately held, the weather hovering like a fogged glass ceiling boxing in all the dampness of the day. Arthur inhaled, exhaled clouds. It felt good to let the cold, clean air into his lungs, into his blood; like a shot of adrenaline to the body, sharpening everything: the prickle of his numbing fingertips; the dewy tickle of his hair curling over his forehead; the realization that he could not keep on as he had been, locked away so tightly within himself that his old friends hardly recognized him and his new friends… well, maybe they’d never known him at all.

He didn’t see a single other soul as he walked, and all over again, Arthur felt desperately lonely. 

And maybe it was the loneliness talking, but Arthur suddenly, very clearly and very fiercely, didn’t want to think anymore that Eames could be lying. He made the decision. Even if that’s all Eames did (hadn’t he admitted as much?), because what did Eames have to gain now, by lying to Arthur? Arthur had nothing left to give him. He thought, Eames had looked so run-down and desperately earnest—there _had_ to have been some truth there. That _had_ to have been his real heart he’d bared to Arthur, didn’t it? Eames was an actor. And his sort of forgery went beyond paper and paint and canvas; it was a forgery of self—acting amplified. And yet Arthur wanted so badly, with distance and just a little time between them now, to believe him this time. 

His legs were growing sluggish from the cold as he rounded the far side of The Grove, Oxford seemingly at a distance—dark spires against a bright, faintly grey sky. All the wisdom of the ages closed up in towers and musty libraries and the fallible minds of eager students and tired professors, and yet what could he seek from any of them? There was no answer to this, the careful and careless fragility of being human and so fallible.

Eames would return with the rest of the University. Arthur decided that he would go to him. 

Arthur would tell Eames the things he hadn’t yet been able to in London. Not because Eames deserved to know—Arthur was sick of thinking about people as having or not having worth; couldn’t they just _be_ —but because Arthur hadn’t ever said them, not yet, not to anyone, and maybe Eames would… understand. Arthur had never thought anyone would, but Eames, perhaps…

If anyone could. 

Arthur was scared. Scared that, worse maybe than lying, Eames had told him everything—the utter truth—but that he wouldn’t be able to maintain it. It seemed a very real possibility, the idea that Eames had succumbed to a sense of freedom in London, away from his friends in Oxford, and that he wouldn’t be able to replicate that once he was back under their influence. Arthur hadn’t seen any mention in the paper of the Turner; not it hitting the black market, nor an investigation into the authenticity of any museums’ holdings. What if, when term started back up, Eames was exactly as he had been before, veil pulled down clean over his face? 

Then Arthur didn’t have him, not really. But he had, once, and maybe he could be that person again—knowing, knowable—someday, with someone. 

If Arthur forgave Eames—if that’s what he was trying so desperately to allow himself to do—it would have to be for his own sake. Because once upon a time Arthur had taught himself that it was for the best, keeping people an arm’s distance away, keeping parts of himself in shadow. He’d taught himself that that was _safer._ But where was the good in safety if, at the end of the day, you ended up alone for it? 

Eames had risked his pride by telling Arthur what he had, but more than that, he’d risked his safety—the freedom years of obfuscation had bought him. Eames had, Arthur knew, risked himself entirely. He had bared himself in a way Arthur never had, not even to Mal and Dom, who surely would laugh in his face if he dared to suggest to them that _he was a soldier_. He was meant to be a solider. It would’ve seemed so ridiculous to them. Dom with his dismissal of foot soldier, of dumb sheep. 

Eames, though. Eames would _understand_.

So maybe it was time Arthur let Eames be an influence on him, and let himself be honest with someone for once.

Nearer the High Street Arthur walked along the River Cherwell. Beside the boathouse a twin set of punts lapped against shore, tugging at the ropes that secured them. They were dry, still waiting, and the sight of them made Arthur feel wistful. It would be spring, eventually. There would be noise again on the High Street beyond and The Grove would fill up with rogue students picnicking and studying, blankets thrown down on still-damp grass. In the mornings the rowers would be out, gliding with meticulous rhythm through the fog that will have settled on the water before dawn, and by noon the river would be peppered with punters—amateurs or not, tipsy or not, pushing themselves along. 

Arthur wanted to be here for that. He wanted to be here when spring hit and life defrosted. He wanted to traipse into London in April for The Boat Race and he wanted to jump off Magdalen Bridge into the river on May Morning. He wanted to commiserate and revel on Suicide Sunday and he wanted to be ridiculous and dress in all his finery for the Trinity Term Balls. He wanted to see the streets flood with students in their sub fusc, carnations pinned to their chests, so full of fear and hope, live-wires before their exams; exhausted, relieved soldiers-returned-home-from-the-front after them. 

Oxford was a charmed sort of place. Williams had suggested it aloud when they’d met for drinks, clearly thinking Arthur wasn’t appreciating that. This stolen bit of arrested time: it was his, and it had all the potential of the sublime. But only if he bucked up and did something with it. Something _real_ , something that would _last_. 

Yes, Arthur would go to Eames. 

Arthur would go to Eames and they would talk, finally. Both of them. They would fix the things that they’d broken so carelessly, like the children they had been, and Oxford would thaw around them, and they could be together through the spring, into the summer. Eames, Arthur thought, probably came alive in the summer. He could picture him with a freckled, pink nose and browned shoulders, his hair almost blonde from the sun. A loose, linen shirt and a jug of Pimms. 

There could still be time for them yet. 

Oxford had a few weeks of quiet left in it yet, a few weeks of grey without tinsel and fairy lights and nostalgic songs played on repeat to soften the short days. The very city itself felt suspended, and the college in particular: its drafty corridors gone dull and catatonic, the galleries too quiet first thing every morning without the echoing vestiges of choir practice, the scrap of cutlery and stifled yawning. The dining hall was set for tourists now, who drifted in and out at odd intervals, their necks craning toward the rafters and fawning over the portraiture that hovered high on the walls. 

Arthur watched them sometimes, watched them dare each other to touch the toe of one shoe to the manicured grass—the careless ones did it; the reverent ones blushed, turned away. From the Cloisters he would see them look up at the Great Tower and he could imagine they were dreaming of a May Morning themselves when they might, with permission, spill out into the quad and sing the Hymnus Eucharisticus with the sunrise lighting the grey stone ablaze. Arthur watched different people play this same game of pretend day after day, and he couldn’t fault them for it. In all its stillness and grandeur, Arthur could see again the magic of such a place. 

It was easy for Arthur to fall back into the rhythm of his work now that he had resolved to make amends with Eames. It settled something in him, that decision, and freed up the currents in his brain to once again think sharply and purposefully about his project—the ridiculous thing that had brought him here in the first place and that was keeping him here, ensconced safely in ivory—as Williams had pointed out. In keeping him out of the desert his project had, in a way, given him Eames in the first place, and in the wake of his talk with Williams, progress on it felt suddenly more vital than ever. 

It _could_ be real, his theory. It’d have to be real, it’d have to _work_ , if Arthur wanted to save himself and keep Eames. 

If it didn’t? In six, nine months, maybe he’d step on an IED and dissolve into the air like so much dust, and that would be his legacy instead. 

So Arthur filled his disappearing days with the minutiae of work: lists and sketches tapped to the wall above his desk; a self-curated reading list of pharmacology texts, engineering manuals; he devoured with vigor and intent every recent issue of every neurology periodical he could think of because single-mindedly was the only way he’d ever gotten anything done. He wore thin prime seats in the Radcliffe Science Library and the Bodleian, priming himself for his descent into the ‘mad scientist’ future he could already see barreling toward him. 

It wasn’t until Arthur arrived at the library early one morning to find his new favorite spot taken (second floor, near a window overlooking Parks Road; it had the best light and the mildest of drafts) that he remembered: for all his self-directed work over the past two weeks, there were actual University-required seminars set to start up in just a few days, and he hadn’t done a lick of preparatory reading. 

And for the first time in his life, Arthur didn’t care.

Dom and Mal returned to Oxford in mid-January, as did the rest to the university; slowly, slowly, and then all at once. The college was loud again in the morning and Dom dragged him to the medieval Hall for the first proper breakfast Arthur’d had in weeks—eggs and sausage and stewed tomatoes washed down with juice and then tea—filling him in on what he and Mal had gotten up to after Arthur left. They’d gone to Paris, apparently, holed up in the tiny apartment in which Mal had grown-up—her father had kept it after they’d moved to England, renting it out at odd intervals to adjuncts and visiting professors, mostly. It’d been empty over the academic break, though, and Dom talked wistfully of who Mal became once her feet hit the streets of the 5th Arrondissement. 

_A poet’s heart,_ Mal had said once about Dom. Indeed. 

Arthur was quiet throughout the account, busying his mouth with three shallow cups of increasingly weaker PG Tips. He tried to focus on Dom’s story, nodding appropriately, but his mind kept drifting, caught up in the simple but precious notion of being known so well and cherished by someone who was once a stranger. How that’s what humans did, and how crazy was that? How amazing? Arthur could feel it growing in him, the gnawing hunger to be spoken about in such a way by someone who loved him just so.

Dom, perhaps mistaking Arthur’s silence for something like heartbreak or jealousy or boredom, came to a sheepish, sudden stop in the middle of a story (something about Mal insisting they traipse halfway across the city for a slice of “the richest, most luxurious chocolate cake one could imagine,” and how she’d been so excited to get it home and enjoy it with the cheap bottle of grocery store wine they’d bought the day before, but how Dom had tripped on the last step of the four-story walk-up and sent the cake box tumbling all the way to the front step of the apartment…)—

“Sorry,” Dom said inoffensively. He shoved the last of his dry toast into his mouth and spent a good while chewing it, looking not at Arthur but rather at the empty space of table between them. Dom eventually swallowed and sat up straight. There was something hesitant in the stiff set of his shoulders, however; as though he were unaccustomed to caring about something he could be so proud and boastful of. As though he was wary and unsure of how best to wear a badge of love and devotion without it seeming distasteful. 

“It’s fine,” Arthur assured him. “I’m happy for you guys. I’ve said that, haven’t I? I’m really happy.” Arthur smiled to show it wasn’t a lie, and his face ached a little from the unfamiliar stretch. 

Dom smiled back, shyly, and nodded. 

With that, Arthur excused himself, a spun tale tipping off his tongue about a meeting with his project advisor—he’d tell Dom and Mal about Eames later, or some abridged version of it, but not now, _not yet_ —and slipped out of college. He took a left on the High Street and started down the cobbled Merton Street. It was bright outside, crisp and still quiet, the day before term. Just past the Merton College Chapel Arthur cut through the college grounds, a familiar shortcut that still felt daring, like wandering onto someone else’s turf, and rounded the backside of Christ Church along Merton Field. 

The quick walk was invigorating, the blue sky promising overhead, and Arthur entered through the Meadow Gate confidently, the way to Eames’s rooms practically manifesting itself as muscle memory in his legs. 

He rapped his knuckles against the door and waited. There was nothing for a torturous minute. 

Arthur knocked again. “Eames?” he called, pressing his face close to the wood. 

He jiggled the handle after a moment and listened for—anything. Life.

Suddenly there was noise on the other side, the telltale sound of shuffling, something heavy being shifted along the floor. Arthur jolted back as the door swung open and then he was blinking down at the pathetic slip of a boy suddenly standing in the doorway, his ruddy baby cheeks covered with a patchy, lack-luster attempt at scruff. His boxers slipping low over his hipbones. 

“What?” the boy asked gruffly. Arthur startled—an _American._ Another American. 

He felt stricken. Was this his… replacement? Had Eames come back to Oxford with a new assignment, a new victim? Or worse yet, was this… not that. Was this something more? Something new, and better? The thing Arthur hadn’t been able to have with Eames? He heart jumped unfairly into his throat. 

“Yeah, man?” the boy tried again, irritated. 

“Uh, sorry,” Arthur said, recovering himself badly. “I’m looking for Eames.”

“Who?”

“Eames,” he repeated dumbly, trying to get a look around the boy’s slight shoulders. The boy moved, the set of his face both hostile and confused, and blocked Arthur’s probing eyes. “The guy who lives—this is his room.”

“Sorry dude, pretty sure it isn’t. Maybe you got the number confused.” 

“No, no I didn’t. He lives here. I’ve _been_ in there before. It’s his room.” Arthur gestured past the boy into the room beyond, but he just shook his head.

“I don’t know what to tell you? I mean, I’ve been moved in for a couple of days now. I can tell you pretty confidently there’s no one else here.” 

“It’s a double, though, isn’t it?” Maybe the college had finally cottoned on to Eames’s particular privilege and had thrown him a roommate for good measure. 

“Well, yeah, but the other room is empty.”

“Can I see?” 

“You think I can’t describe an empty room well enough?” 

Arthur blanched. The living room was dark behind the boy, but now that Arthur was looking for it, he could just make out how blank the walls looked with missing canvasses and splashes of light from the Tiffany lamp Eames always had propped in one corner. Where once there had been life, _personality,_ there was now just an ordinary slate of dim, undecorated wall.

So this boy wasn’t some new conquest. He wasn’t Arthur’s replacement. 

He was Eames’s. 

“Sorry,” Arthur said, taking a step back. “I just… I didn’t realize he’d…” That he’d what? _Left_? Had Eames up and left? Arthur tried to think… Eames had had suitcases with him when they’d found each other in the train station. He had never explained whether he was coming or going, Arthur had just assumed… 

“Sorry,” Arthur said again, stumbling away down the hallway. 

Arthur’s mind glitched, moments of whirling thoughts and utter blankness chasing one another as he staggered out into Peckwater Quad, into the incongruent sun. Students stepped around him as he walked without direction. Arthur didn’t understand—would Eames really have left without saying goodbye to Arthur? Without explaining… 

Except what was Arthur to him, anymore, besides a complicated conquest? Maybe it was in Arthur’s head and Arthur’s head alone, the childish hope that their cruelty to one another might be a bruise, that it might be soothed in time and lose its tenderness to something so much sweeter. Arthur— _what an idiot_ —had thought London had _meant_ something—

Except Eames had said goodbye. Arthur just hadn’t been listening. 

Suddenly a student knocked into Arthur’s shoulder, jolting him from the self-pitying closed-circuitry of his head. He looked up, his brow still furrowed, to find Alistair glaring at him.

“Watch it,” he said, his voice sharp and familiar. 

Arthur blinked at Alistair owlishly and watched dumbly as he turned away with an exaggerated huff and started away down the pavement with three other Bullingdon boys in his shadow. Arthur thought he knew them, knew their names even, could recognize them from the pompous sway of their backs, the effortful set of their shoulders. 

“Wait!” Arthur called, finally gathering himself. He hurried after them. “Please!” 

The group stopped abruptly and did an about-face until they were once again collectively staring down Arthur, who tried hard not to wither a little before them.

“Sorry, it’s just—have you seen Eames?” Arthur knew how pathetic he sounded, and he knew Alistair had once asked him the same question and Arthur hadn’t given him anything like the answer he’d wanted. Cooperation, he thought, was unlikely. 

“Eames who?” Alistair asked after a steely pause. 

Arthur startled. 

“Eames,” he repeated. “Your _friend_.”

“We most assuredly know of no _friend_ called Eames. Do we lads?”

The boys flanking Alistair crossed their arms over their chests and shook their heads, the movement weirdly and disconcertingly in sync. 

Arthur laughed. “Okay, fine. You’re pissed at him or something—just. Have you seen him, though? Seen him at all, since last term?”

They didn’t say anything for a while, but they gave Arthur a particular look. Curious. 

Eventually Alistair shrugged and said in a treacle-sweet, placating voice, “As we’ve already said, Mr. Darling. We don’t know of any Eameses.” 

And then they were gone, and Arthur could’ve throttled them for it. 

But the wind had gone out of him and his legs felt, suddenly, stupidly weak, and he fled the college grounds.

Eames was gone. Eames was gone as though he’d never existed. He had scrubbed himself from the walls and from the confidences of those who knew him, and Arthur wasn’t sure how to wrap his head around it. Why hadn’t he told Arthur, when they’d seen each other, that it would be the last time? 

But also: Why would he tell Arthur? 

Arthur sat atop his bed, feet on the floor, staring dumbly ahead. His room was cold (he hadn’t the energy to switch on his radiator) and silent, and he could hear the very thumping of his heart, the blood in his ears. This wasn’t how things were suppose to end. Arthur was going to _forgive Eames_. They were going to make their amends to one another. They were going to have months and months yet together for the sole fact that they made each other happy. Didn’t they? Eames had made Arthur happy, so fucking happy, in just two months—a kind of happy he’d forgotten he could be. And then it’d been ripped to shreds and Arthur was sat alone, clutching the needle and thread with which he’d hoped to stitch it all back together. 

Except Eames was gone now.

And maybe Eames had told him the truth in London, about himself; maybe everything hadn’t been a lie. But one thing had been: because if Eames had cared about Arthur at all, he wouldn’t have disappeared, not without an explanation. That was Arthur’s mistake: filling Eames up with emotions he’d never pretended to. Believing in a future he’d never been promised.

Arthur’s desk was stacked high with notebooks, lists, precisely organized binders. There was only one thing Arthur could do now: finish the work. It was all he had, and it would be his legacy—if he was lucky. Some people got their great loves. Arthur had known young that he wouldn’t be one of them. He’d only pretended for a bit. But that part was over now, and he’d have to stop believing in the redemption of such a pretty stupid thought and get to work. If he wanted to save himself, Arthur would have to make it work. Williams had been right about that. His project… if he didn’t figure it out by September he’d have nothing and be no one when he was finally disappeared himself, dropped into the desert with a gun and a memory of lush green quads and musty books and lips pressed against his, tasting of too strong tea. 

It was easier once Hilary term started and Arthur could fall completely into a vicious and demanding routine, something no one questioned: Up before dawn, groggily reading in bed by the weak light of his bedside lamp, his room too cold yet for him to drag himself over to his desk. With the sun he’d finally emerge, make himself tea in the kitchen and retreat again to his room for a few hours to pore over reading: notebooks filled with his neat scrawl, theoretical chemistry equations and haphazard sketches of mechanisms Arthur could conceptualize but not yet build. 

He would leave the college by mid-morning for tutorials and seminars, hole up in the library in between, or in Dr. Charles’ clinic, where he still volunteered (he didn’t hope that Eames might walk in unannounced some afternoon. He didn’t). The professor indulged Arthur’s tangents, usually, but it was becoming clearer and clearer to Arthur just where Dr. Charles’ theories ended, and where Arthur’s practicality would have to start. Each day the professor looked to Arthur more limited—less enigmatic and more stodgy—and he thought that very soon his very usefulness to Arthur would wither entirely. 

Arthur tried to make time for Dom and Mal, as well: truncated lunchtime reprieves or indulgent evening events (a loud pub with a few drinks or sprawling out in any one of their quiet rooms with more than a few drinks). They were happy, they made Arthur happy (mostly, as much as they could), and he hadn’t told either of them what he was doing, the precipice he was standing alongside. He didn’t like to think about it when he was with them, when his limbs were loose from Fosters or some heady sweet wine Mal had procured from somewhere (a singular talent of hers). If they knew—if they suspected at all—that their Arthur was transformed from the boy they’d met and adopted in September, it was easy enough for them to blame Eames. By some tactic agreement they never spoke his name, but Arthur could tell. 

“Just wait until the days grow long again,” Mal cooed, tipsy and clutching his arm, her feet folded delicately beneath her as she curled up close to Arthur on his bedroom floor. Dom leaned against his desk a few feet away, drinking dessert wine straight from the bottle, watching them dopily. “You’ll see, mon petit chou-fleur. The world will be so bright.” Whenever he seemed to be drifting from them, when he went quiet and his eyes got glassy, Mal grabbed tightly to some part of him and refused to let go until he was back and could smile shyly at them again, and that, at least, was good. 

By February Arthur had found a chemistry student: grossly talented, he’d heard him called, maddeningly ornery, and most importantly: discreet. An indelicate man who towered over Arthur with his tangle of disproportionate limbs and curious eyes. Arthur’d first heard about him from two girls with blown pupils and twitching fingers whilst waiting in the queue for the toilet at a pub one night. He tracked him down the following afternoon and an hour later Arthur was handing him over photocopies of his notes. Soon enough Arthur was joining him in the chemistry lab a few nights week. 

In March he found an engineer, a bombastic and brash Romanian woman who mumbled everything she spoke but marked up Arthur’s schematics with such confidence and precision that Arthur trusted he didn’t really need to know what she had to _say_ about them—she understood them implicitly; she smirked at his efforts, simplified the mechanism in minutes, and assured him, sure, it could be done. No problem. 

It was surprising how easy it was to gather up other people’s brilliance; you just had to find the restless, the doubtful. The ones who would never end up channeling their talents in the way a place like Oxford told them they should. 

Weeks got away from Arthur in that way. A few hours sleep, caffeine, the library, a seminar, a tutorial, the lab. If he was wasting away, it was for a good reason, it was purposeful, and he couldn’t find it in himself to care. Slowly Arthur began to see Dom and Mal less and less, the further along his project got, and each time he did, Mal gave him such a sad look that he didn’t know how he’d stand to see her ever again. He was though, at the very least, beginning to forget about Eames. 

In the end he made company with cages of white mice instead, monitoring them after hours in a locked chemistry lab he should never have had access to. He dosed them, watched them sleep, wake, live on. Promising in the most rudimentary way, but Arthur was growing impatient and he began to believe that it was enough—it was enough that these early batches weren’t killing or impairing them in any obvious way. But there was only ever going to be one way to find out if the drugs were capable of what Arthur needed them to be capable of… 

Arthur found a medical student and learned how to administer drugs intravenously. 

As promised, the days were, in fact, eventually growing longer, warmer, brighter, when Mal found him in the library one afternoon and groaned at him in her particular French way. “You look skinny,” she said. “You need sun. Come away with me.”

“Mal,” Arthur said gently. “I’ve got to—“

She grabbed up his book with a huff. 

“Nothing. You _have_ to do nothing. Everything is all a choice. So choose to come and spend some hours in the light with me, my incorrigible vampire.”

“I was reading that.”

Mal, conscientious in her way, had bookmarked his page with her fingers when she’d plucked the book up from the table. She opened it and looked down at the page he’d been engrossed, her brow furrowing. 

“‘The stimulated synchronization of two subject’s brain waves…’” she read aloud before pursing her lips and letting out a derisive, dismissive noise. “You know another way to make two brains sync up? Easy and without so much work as this? Tell them a story,” she said, closing the book with a huff of finality. “Come away with me and I’ll tell you a story and just imagine how our brains will light up.” 

Arthur didn’t know how to say no to Mal, not really, not when her cheeks were pink and windswept and she was beaming at him like a schoolgirl determined to wheedle her way, so he went away with her. For a moment the light hurt his eyes when they stepped out. 

Mal linked her arm through his as they started out the center of town. “Vaults & Garden. Let’s have a coffee, sit outside,” she insisted, and when they’d pushed through tourist groups and students and snagged a vaguely damp wooden table outside, pushed up against a cool stone wall in between potted flowers beginning to bloom, Mal turned to him, suddenly serious. 

“I heard you were talking to Nigel Miller,” she said. Nigel—the Chemistry third year Arthur had taken up with. Arthur tried to school his face into a look of nonchalance. 

“Where’d you hear that?”

“His mildly unhappy girlfriend lives on my floor.”

“It’s not like _that_ ,” Arthur said, misunderstanding.

“I know it’s not _like that_ ,” Mal mimicked. “You silly, prudish American.” Mal sighed, took a long and silent slurp of her coffee, smacking her lips contentedly. “What are you getting up to?” she said after a moment. 

“Why do you assume I’m getting up to anything?” 

“Is it for your project or is it about Eames?”

Arthur sighed, too exhausted to play coy with her. “Does everything have to be?”

“You miss him?”

Arthur was quiet. Honestly he didn’t even know if he missed Eames anymore, or if he missed the idea of him, or if he just missed having someone _there_ who wasn’t too busy or too distracted to put in the _effort_ it sometimes took to drag Arthur out of his own head. Dom and Mal had each other now, and though they tried—frankly they tried harder than Arthur probably deserved—to keep him afloat, Arthur was perhaps trying equally hard to let go. 

“Probably he misses you, too,” Mal continued. “I have not said, because I am not yet convinced either of you is good for the other, but I see it in him, too. That far away look. His mouth, it is always downturned, like yours.”

“What do you mean?” The weak thump of his heart jolted, jumped into his throat. 

“In his work, there is something sad about it now.”

Arthur blinked as he tried to find words, his mind careening momentarily off the rails. “Wait. He’s been in class?”

“In studio, yes.” 

“But he left. He’s gone.”

“Gone where? I saw him on Tuesday.” 

“But. I thought… He didn’t come back to Oxford after the break.”

“Of course he did. Why would he not?” Mal’s face crumpled delicately in confusion. Arthur thought she was staring at him like one would an oddly insistent toddler who was adorable, but clearly in the wrong. 

“I… need to go,” Arthur announced, staggering to his feet. 

“What? No. My darling, sit. Please! I didn’t mean to upset you so.” Mal stood as well and reached for him, but Arthur backed away, shaking his head.

He couldn’t look at her. He turned and hurried away down the cobbled path around the Radcliffe Camera, needing to disappear into its crowds, even as he could hear her petulantly calling after him.

Eames was still at Oxford. Arthur didn’t understand. He’d… what, changed rooms? Dropped Alistair and his wretched band of merry men in some attempt at a turning over a new leaf? But still he’d stayed away from Arthur. He’d bared himself, offered up his most vulnerable self to Arthur’s scrutiny, and Arthur had done nothing to compromise that show of trust, even when Eames had dared him to. But in the end neither show had meant anything, and Eames had carried on like he’d apparently been doing his whole life. Arthur was the collateral damage of Eames’s reformation, just one more un-special thing to be left behind. 

Fine. Eames didn’t want amends. And he certainly didn’t want Arthur. So there was only one thing for it: to carry on. 

Furious, Arthur hurried to the chemistry lab.


End file.
